MSI Z87-G45 Audio Question

BearATK

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Sep 12, 2013
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I recently purchased the MSI Z87-G45 motherboard which has the Realtek ALC1150 audio on board. I use 5.1 speakers connected through the back panel and have set the audio manager to 5.1 mode. When plugging in headphones to the front panel, I've noticed that the manager keeps the audio in 5.1 mode (headphones still output all sound channels).

My question then is: is there any virtual surround / directional audio being done automatically here? Or should there be a way to have the audio manager change to a "headphone" mode when headphones are plugged in?

Thanks!
 

BearATK

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Sep 12, 2013
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So I have to manually change the speaker configuration to stereo mode everytime I plug in my headphones? What is going when I use the 5.1 configuration when using a pair of headphones?