Seperating voice chat and music outputs on a PC.

April 9, 2008 5:30 PM

A friend had a question I was uncertain about... is there a way on a laptop running Vista -- short of having two sound cards -- where you can have Ventrillo voice chat through any kind of headphones, while at the same time having entirely seperate streaming radio playing to speakers through the audio out port on the laptop? She's open to any kind of headphones or any streaming audio software which would support this. Failing this... is there a good, simple, ideally non-invasive workaround to add a second sound card to a laptop?
posted by markkraft to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

There are USB headphones/headsets out there that would fill this role as they appear as another sound output device to Windows - Configure Ventrilo to use the USB audio out, and leave Windows with the soundcard as it's default playback device.
posted by Rendus at 5:42 PM on April 9, 2008

I remember reading that Logitech headsets have the problem that they only reproduce sounds that are played after they have been plugged in. Anything that was playing before it keeps being played through the speakers unless you close and reopen the program.
posted by Memo at 5:43 PM on April 9, 2008

Seconding a USB headset. It's basically a second soundcard with headphones attached.
posted by GuyZero at 5:50 PM on April 9, 2008

If you go the USB headset route (I use logitech ones) you can use Quick sound switch to choose which is the dominant output source before running a program to guarantee who gets which sound.
posted by jmcgrady at 6:17 PM on April 9, 2008

Just because I've been looking recently: you can also get more general (ie, not tied to a particular pair of 'phones) USB audio devices for next to nothing. e.g.
posted by pompomtom at 9:39 PM on April 9, 2008