Keep laptop speakers while using headphones ?

[StoneCut]

Hi, thanks for the awesome app. I'm a linux user on a Dell M1530. I'm looking for a way to keep the laptop speakers enabled when I plug my headphone into the second output jack. It works fine for independently monitoring but I don't want to hook the main out to my stereo system all the time.

Anyone have an idea ?

[pi r squared]

As far as I know, plugging in headphones will always cut the speakers out, and I believe that's a hardware thing and therefore not changeable.

[StoneCut]

Many thanks for your reply. Actually, I always thought the same but while looking for a solution I stumbled over a lot of forum entries were people were having the exact opposite problem: Their speakers continued to work even when they plugged in the headphones (and those worked, too). This is even on the same hardware. They fixed it by updating their ALSA but I don't really want to downgrade either.

Anyway, it was worth a try.

[jwmurphy]

That is possible, depending on your particular configuration of course. I can only help you based on my laptop (HP nx8220), which has only one headphone output. If I run KMix and go to the Switches tab, there is a Headphone Jack Sense option, which controls whether or not the speakers cut out with headphones plugged in. This is in KDE of course, I can't recall what the GNOME equivalent is, and you must have ALSA configured correctly to support your hardware. Good luck.

[ewanuno]

in linux all these things are possible and more, alsa includes some tools that let you do all sorts of non standard things with your soundcard. in windows then your out of luck!

alsactl and alsa mixer have more options than you can poke a stick at. but you're going to have to study whats going on, from what i remeber though to really understand what all these options do you need to read the source code of the alsa driver for you sound card, and make some guesses about exactly how the sound chip is connected inside your particular laptop.

good luck! p.s. there is probably and alsa specific mailing list where you''l get a better answer.

[gatdec1]

I never though of this using mixx. If there is a head phone socket on the amp would that not do.