SCS won't switch between speakers and headphones

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Theatre III Sound
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SCS won't switch between speakers and headphones

Post by Theatre III Sound » Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:39 am

Setup:

Toshiba Satellite Laptop w/Windows 7
SCS 10.9.4

Yesterday I connected a Presonus Firebox audio interface to my laptop and switched SCS to use the internal mixer and the ASIO driver for the firebox. That all worked as expected. However now I have a strange problem with the laptop.

I had always been able to play sounds through the on-board speakers and have it switch to headphones when they were plugged in. Now this doesn't happen with SCS - sounds always play through the speakers whether the headphones are plugged in or not. Windows Media Player, for example, switches to headphones as soon as they are plugged in.

I have tried going back to not using the internal mixer, but the problem persists. In the device mapper, the physical device list for the laptop now lists Speakers and Headphones separately (I don't think it did before). I can select Headphones (if they are plugged in) and then SCS will play through them. If later, I unplug the phones and start SCS, I get a "Device not Found" error and have to reselect the speakers (and re-initialize them) before I can get them to play again.

Anyone else experience this problem and have a fix for it?

Mike Daniell
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Re: SCS won't switch between speakers and headphones

Post by Mike Daniell » Wed Feb 22, 2012 1:17 pm

What may be happening regarding WMP is that when you plug in the headphones that Windows switches your default sound device to the headphones. By default, WMP will use the default sound device. SCS, however, uses whatever device(s) you have selected in the device map, regardless of the current Windows sound device. Can you confirm that Windows changes the default sound device when you plug in the headphones?
Mike Daniell
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Theatre III Sound
Posts: 87
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2007 10:07 am
Location: Acton, MA, USA
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Re: SCS won't switch between speakers and headphones

Post by Theatre III Sound » Wed Feb 22, 2012 2:55 pm

I went to the Toshiba support site, downloaded the audio driver for my laptop and reinstalled it. Now all is well. The device mapper now lists only only one device for the internal audio and it switches automatically to the headphones when I plug them in.

I'm guessing the installation of the Presonus ASIO driver somehow changed the way the internal audio device advertised itself, but I could be way off base here.

Eric Snodgrass
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Re: SCS won't switch between speakers and headphones

Post by Eric Snodgrass » Fri Feb 24, 2012 12:47 pm

I think when you installed the Presonus device that it became the default audio device for Windows, thus bypassing your internal sound card that drives the speakers. Does your Presonus still work?

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