output to 2 sound cards simultaneously

**miwise** · 12-20-2006, 03:34 PM

Is there a way to output to 2 sound cards at the same time. I have a laptop with one blown channel and one good one. I want to use it for subwoofer. At the same time I want to use the soundblaster usb for the highs. How can I do this?

**miwise** · 12-20-2006, 05:14 PM

Is there a way to output to 2 sound cards at the same time. I have a laptop with one blown channel and one good one. I want to use it for subwoofer. At the same time I want to use the soundblaster usb for the highs. How can I do this?

**miwise** · 12-20-2006, 07:37 PM

Alright, found a way to do it, but it will require me plugging the input on the laptop into the headphone jack on the usb soundblaster. This mutes the rca outs on the soundblaster thereby cutting my highs out. is there a way to force the soundblaster to output to both headphone and rca at the same time?

DIGItonium · 12-20-2006, 11:31 PM

That's too complicated of a setup. Stick to a single USB Soundblaster that outputs 5.1 channels. You can use CMSS to mirror the audio channels to multiple speakers. All except sub are full range outputs.

**miwise** · 12-21-2006, 12:02 AM

OK. I'll try that. My soundblaster usb only had one output. I does have fiber optic out though. I would have to purchase a decoder to get all of the channels i guess.

**liquid_smoke** · 12-21-2006, 01:12 AM

maybe use a splitter?
Just pulling straws as im not sure how your setup is setup or exactly what your really trying to do. It sounds like your trying to create a workaround for something thats broken. A diagram i think would help a lot to explain how you have things plugged up and what not. There are a lot of really good audio peeps here (me not being one of them) that could take a look at it and tell you exactly what to do.

**DarquePervert** · 12-21-2006, 08:07 AM

I merged your tywo identical thread.

QUIT CROSSPOSTING YOUR QUESTIONS!!!

DIGItonium · 12-21-2006, 08:58 AM

Yea I'm a tad confused about how you connect your highs, lows, and something involving the headphone jack to the Soundblaster.

See if there's an option in your Soundblaster control panel to disable muting when headphone is detected. I have this option with my X-Fi, so it's news to me. The other method requires modification, and that's just in theory.

Is your USB Soundblaster device capable of outputing more than 2 channels of audio? Assuming 2ch is your only option and you are only looking for a music only setup (the setup you describe doesn't make sense for movies), I recommend hooking up the 2ch audio soundcard output to a multichannel amp like a 4ch or 2ch+1ch (with a pair of rca y-cables).

The amp should have crossover settings for each "pair" of channels. So you'll set the crossover setting to high pass for connecting car speakers, while the other channel pair gets the low pass setting.

Therefore, with full range audio going into your amp you are able to filter it for specific speakers.

It's not as complicated as it sounds.... I'm just providing detail haha.

**miwise** · 12-21-2006, 10:26 AM

Well, I'm just trying to make it work for now. The onboard sound has a problem with one channel and I had a soundblaster usb laying around the house. I didn't want to shell out a lot of money for a pcmcia sound card like the audigy zs b/c I still haven't decided if I'm going to keep this computer in the car. I have been considering installing a desktop micro atx board w/3.0 pentium 4, but this would require a considerable psu (like the dsatx or the opus 250 as the processor is dual core). This would require more money which I don't have right now (having my boat's engine rebuilt) so I'm making do with what I have for now. Eventually I will put the p4 in the car and the laptop in my van (which I rarely use and only to pull my boat with). I plan to change everything over in February, so I don't want to invest a lot of money for now into it. BTW, I have 5 inputs on my amps, one for subwoofer. . .seperate amp, 2 for front, 2 for rear. I guess this would be a 4.1 setup. In this case the front and rear should connect to the soundblaster, and the sub to the one good channel on the onboard sound. I'm going to try a splitter and just hook the usb soundblaster straight into the line input jack on the laptop. We'll see if that does the trick. Thanks!

DIGItonium · 12-21-2006, 12:54 PM

A 4.1 setup is perfectly fine. Once you get a multichannel soundcard setup, you can set the card to run at 4/4.1. For movies, you can leave it as 5.1 (6ch). The center channel becomes downmixed to the front speakers, and the subwoofer signal does not get disabled. Setting it to 4ch mixes the center channel, but you lose the discrete sub out (nearly flipped out when this happened). It's a nice work around :-)

Yea, I recommend something lower power. I'm benchtesting a 25W 2.0GHz Turion processor platform. I'd opt for a slower one, but ended up buying it new. The mini-ITX board I have for this platform is super cool... but the drawback is price. It melted my credit card :-(

Anyhow, both soundcards can co-exist in the system. As for Windows routing sound to both cards at once, it is something I never tried. Typically you are able to select one card or the other for playback/record. The drop down list in the sound properties isn't there for nothing...

So for onboard, you'll end up sticking to mono. For the USB card sitting around, use Y cables to split. Therefore, stick to one or the other for the sake of simplicity. It's better than no PC audio, right? :-) Good luck!