[Ecnassianer]

tl;dr: $500 budget, I need sound to my headset and speakers at the same time and good recording quality.

I need help solving some audio woes. I have a setup that mostly works but the recording quality is pretty terribad, and I need to fix that so my VoIP doesn't suck.

Some things that are important to me:
* My headset has a mic, both the audio quality of the speakers and the mic are reasonably good. Standard headphone jack and mic jack.
* I have a 5.1 surround sound system, it requires 3 jacks (front, rear, sub/center), it has a handy desktop volume control and power button.
* I want to be able to switch between my headset and my speakers by putting on my headset and turning off my speakers (or some similar one button non-software solution).
* I want super pristine recording quality for VoIP

Right now I have audio playing in both my speakers and my headset with some Realtek hacky driver business. The speakers are plugged into the rear jacks and the headset is plugged into the front jacks. The front jacks give me really crappy recording quality. I've spent stupid amounts of time fiddling with this setup, and I'm sick of messing with it to get better recording quality.

How can I just buy a thing, plug it in, and get my audio? I'd like to spend $200, but I could go to $500 if I had to.

 

[Music Alchemist]

I've had great success using the ($49) Schiit SYS passive preamp to switch between headphones and speakers (or other components like amps and DACs) at the push of a button. You would just need to decide on the right electronics to use with the headphones and speakers, then connect everything properly.

 

[obobskivich]

The newer Creative Sound Blaster Z cards would give you everything you want except "put my headset on and it magically senses it and turns off the speakers" (that's frankly not possible no matter how much money you have to throw at it) - you'd have to switch from "Headphones" to "Speakers" in the driver control panel but there would be no physical connectors to swap, since it has a dedicated headphone amplifier (and output) and separate 5.1 output for speakers. Some of them also come with a beam forming mic, which works well enough, or you can just plug your headset's mic into the mic in and ignore the included mic. You'd be looking at like $100-120 for such a card and its fairly easy to install. Look up the Sound blaster Z or Zx.

One question I have is does your speaker system have a headphone jack on it? I know some do, and will usually auto-mute the speakers if that jack senses a connection, but then you'd be physically plugging/unplugging the headphones. Frankly that seems more obnoxious (and can lead to wear and tear on a mechanical part - specifically the jack) than a software switch. Again, what you want is *not possible* in terms of "I just pick and put on my headphones on my head and the speakers magically switch off" - somewhere you are going to have to tell the equipment that you're changing, either as a driver switch, or through a hardware auto-sense, but beyond the speaker system having a jack that works for that, you're looking at an AV receiver or similar device to do that, which will blow your budget on its own (and you'd have to buy new speakers, subwoofer, etc) and you're still going to be physically plugging the headphones.

 

[domsch1988]

If your speaker system does only take analog in, i'm not aware of a hardware solution that could switch between Stereo Analog and Surround analog.
Heck, it's expensive enough to find something that switches 3 or 4 stereo analog sources to a single output.

My PC automatically switches to the headphone output if i plug them in. That's convenient enough for me. If you want to leave everything plugged in, i don't think there is an easier solution than switching it in the Audio Control Panel of Windows...

 

[Ecnassianer]

The newer Creative Sound Blaster Z cards would give you everything you want except "put my headset on and it magically senses it and turns off the speakers" (that's frankly not possible no matter how much money you have to throw at it) - you'd have to switch from "Headphones" to "Speakers" in the driver control panel but there would be no physical connectors to swap, since it has a dedicated headphone amplifier (and output) and separate 5.1 output for speakers.

I don't need magic, the power button on the speakers is working just fine. I just don't want to do any software swapping. I'm often playing games when I switch, and I can't alt-tab out to fiddle with drivers. That's why I'm fine with playing the audio in both.

One question I have is does your speaker system have a headphone jack on it? I know some do, and will usually auto-mute the speakers if that jack senses a connection, but then you'd be physically plugging/unplugging the headphones.

I don't know why I haven't tried this yet. I'll give it a shot next time I start tinkering. Maybe that plug merges all 5 channels into Stereo?

 

[Ecnassianer]

I've had great success using the ($49) Schiit SYS passive preamp to switch between headphones and speakers (or other components like amps and DACs) at the push of a button. You would just need to decide on the right electronics to use with the headphones and speakers, then connect everything properly.

I googled to here:
http://schiit.com/products/sys

It looks like it doesn't do 5.1?

 

[Music Alchemist]

I googled to here:
http://schiit.com/products/sys

It looks like it doesn't do 5.1?

Yeah, I have no experience with 5.1 systems and don't know how the connections work, or if there's a way to convert a stereo connection to what you need.

 

[Ecnassianer]

If your speaker system does only take analog in, i'm not aware of a hardware solution that could switch between Stereo Analog and Surround analog.
Heck, it's expensive enough to find something that switches 3 or 4 stereo analog sources to a single output.

My PC automatically switches to the headphone output if i plug them in. That's convenient enough for me. If you want to leave everything plugged in, i don't think there is an easier solution than switching it in the Audio Control Panel of Windows...

K, that might mean my efforts are futile. I wonder if I can find a 5.1 headset that has Front, Left, Sub/Center inputs.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I don't need magic, the power button on the speakers is working just fine. I just don't want to do any software swapping. I'm often playing games when I switch, and I can't alt-tab out to fiddle with drivers. That's why I'm fine with playing the audio in both.

I don't know why I haven't tried this yet. I'll give it a shot next time I start tinkering. Maybe that plug merges all 5 channels into Stereo?

The easiest way to swap between 5.1 speakers and 2.0ch headphones by plugging the latter in/out is probably with an external soundcard like the Sound Blaster X7. But double check with tech support on that as well as the equivalent Xonar products because they use the same software suite as the internal cards.

 

[Ecnassianer]

The easiest way to swap between 5.1 speakers and 2.0ch headphones by plugging the latter in/out is probably with an external soundcard like the Sound Blaster X7. But double check with tech support on that as well as the equivalent Xonar products because they use the same software suite as the internal cards.

The X7 is really interesting. Thanks for this tip. I'll do some more research into this. Sounds like it will output both 5.1 and Stereo, that's my magic!

 

[Ecnassianer]

After reading a bunch of X7 reviews it seems like the mic input on the X7 is pretty undesirable. That's a dealbreaker for me. Everything else sounds perfect.

Do you know which Xonar product I should compare to?

 

[obobskivich]

I don't need magic, the power button on the speakers is working just fine. I just don't want to do any software swapping. I'm often playing games when I switch, and I can't alt-tab out to fiddle with drivers. That's why I'm fine with playing the audio in both.

"Both at once" isn't going to be possible with modern Windows driver architecture, unless you get into "hacky solutions" as you've previously stated. Your original post seemed to indicate you didn't like "audio playing in both" which led to "magic is basically the only answer."

The most seamless method here would be an AV receiver, but you'd need new speakers+subwoofer to make it work; with that you'd just plug in the headphones and it'd automatically mute the speakers and do 2ch output for the cans (depending on the receiver, it may even add Dolby Headphone or similar).

What kinds of inputs, overall, do the speakers take? Do they take a digital input and accept Dolby Digital or DTS (and does your computer have the ability to do on-the-fly encoding of such)? Because another option if that's all a "yes" would be to split a TOSlink output and send one side to the speaker system and one side to a decoder that can do 5.1->stereo downmix (Technics SH-AC500D is an example) and then you're turning whatever hardware you want on/off and there's no "software swapping."

Another option would be again to go with the Sound Blaster Z and hook up the 5.1 output to the speakers, and send the digital output to a DAC - you won't have magical 5.1->2.0 in that configuration but you will get stereo output there from stereo sources. Again, there's a strong case for "software swapping" to do this right, unless you're willing to pay for an external decoder that can do everything.

I don't know why I haven't tried this yet. I'll give it a shot next time I start tinkering. Maybe that plug merges all 5 channels into Stereo?

Generally it should, but it isn't being done with anything more than resistors to bring the levels down and prevent clipping. Your best bet would really be switching to "Headphones" or "stereo" or similar in software if you're making this kind of switch, if fidelity matters.

I googled to here:
http://schiit.com/products/sys

It looks like it doesn't do 5.1?

It does not - I don't know why this would be part of the discussion. It's a two input passive preamp - I'm unclear how that would help anything here.

The X7 is really interesting. Thanks for this tip. I'll do some more research into this. Sounds like it will output both 5.1 and Stereo, that's my magic!

The X7 uses the same DSP as the Sound Blaster Z, and is basically the same thing in an external box plus a stereo speaker amplifier.

Something else to think about - some of the Razer surround sound headsets take 5.1 or 7.1 input, and have a thru-output for speakers, and switch on their own box. I have no idea what their sound quality is like, but that might get you exactly what you want.