Sound card PLUS onboard sound

Irishfan64

Distinguished
Jan 3, 2012
5
0
18,510
Hello, I'm new with sound cards (my only weakness with computers) and I'm planing on getting one. I got a new sound system for my computer and I want to get to use all of it. I play games so I have a headset to talk on Vent or Skype. I don't like playing music while talking with the headset so my goal is to use my headset and my speakers (to play music or gamesound) at the same time. The thing is the onboard sound detects the speakers and the headset as one thing. So with my logic I should be able to buy a PCI sound card to plug my speakers into and use my headset with my onboard sound? Ideas?
 

dkm2

Distinguished
Jan 11, 2012
38
0
18,540
Yes, you are correct in a sense. But im having trouble understanding what you want to accomplish.

You want to be able to talk with the headset but no sound other than the other people your talking to, and you want the speakers to just play game sounds and not hear them talking through the speakers?

 
It sounds like he wants to keep the headset only for voice communication, and use the speakers for the normal game input/output.

Technically, you CAN get away with this; what you have to do is have two audio output devices, one for the speakers, and one for the headset. You set whichever output the speakers are set to as the windows default output device, and configure Vent/Skype to use the OTHER device instead. [I'm pretty sure Vent gives the ability to do this, not sure about Skype though]. This way, Vent/Skype will send output to the headset, and everything else will send the output to the speakers.

That being said, there might be an easier way to configure the software to do this...