2 soundcards for different purposes with only 1 set of headphones.

[Vinny77]

My on board RealTek HD sound card sounds a lot better than my audigy 2 zs for everything but gaming. But I do do some gaming, so I need both.

I remember reading here a few years ago on a way to run one sound card through another. Im not really sure on how this works, but since I only have 1 pair of headphones, having to go back and switch the headphones will such and eventually wear out the connectors.

I think it had something to do with using a mini interconnect cable, from one sound card into another.

I tried to search, but when I do i just get to many false positives.

 

[obobskivich]

um, why would you ever want to use onboard sound in place of a discrete card, I know the Audigy 2 ZS is somewhat older, but it doesn't have the HF hum that almost every onboard implementation i've ever seen is subject to, in addition to providing EAX and other advances to the realtek onboard garbage


although, if you're going straight to the headphones, that might be an issue (it can't really drive the HD600's you've got in your sig, my ZS Platinum has some trouble with my AH-D2000's (i was bored one day) and they're only 25 ohms, the HD600's are up there at around 300, even the Platinum's headphone amp stage has trouble with the D2000's (i'm really not surprised))

honestly I would suggest picking one and sticking with it, running two cards requires feeding line out to line in, and making sure your levels are setup right, and you will constant driver conflicts/issues because both are installed, its a real hastle to deal with (i've actually broken applications trying to run a pair or trio of different cards, for essentially the same thing you're after (i actually needed more inputs on a system, and didn't have the cash at the time for a more capable interface))

as far as wearing out the connectors, you can eventually damage the TRS connectors on the cards, but it isn't something that'll happen overnight

again, i'd say pick one, and stay with it, if you really hate the audigy 2, sell it and buy a new card, or just stop using it alltogether, I know for a fact that Realtek's DirectSound 3D and EAX drivers are workable, no, you don't get EAX 4.0, but if you're only going into headphones theres really no benefit (because EAX 4.0 only provides huge gains in quality for multi-channel systems because its hardware accelerated 3d processing for your audio, hence why Audigy and X-Fi have such complex processors relative to everything else on the market, like Envy and Oxygen)