Some kind of headphones for splitting sound???

[piroska]

This is a weird one.
This is for a laptop.....it has one jack for headphones. Unfortunately if you plug in headphones, you get sound ONLY from the headphones.
What we are trying to accomplish, is having sound from laptop (or some 3rd part speakers connected) AND the headphones.

I can do this off Sky...I can even do this off my desktop.

But how the hell do I do it off a laptop???

[dugimodo]

Depends if it's a software or hardware thing, some pcs used to have a physical switch in the front panel jack that disconnected the sound from the sound card when a plug was inserted, and if you didn't use the front panel you had to install links on the header to pass the sound through. Your laptop jack could be the same in which case there's no getting around it when using that jack.

If it's software sometimes getting the latest driver and mucking around in the settings is the answer.

You may have to feed the sound into something else that can do what you want,.

[chiefnz]

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? Why do you want to split the sound output.?

[piroska]

My mum is half deaf. To listen to their videos she has the volume up heaps. My brother is deafened.

So I thought he has normal volume, she connects headphones with their own volume control. But the minute you connect headphones it cust the speaker sound out altogether. Been buggering around for ages.

On a desktop I can, because they have more than 1 audio out port, but not his laptop.

maybe a headphone/speaker jack splitter would work? Such a thing?

[chiefnz]

maybe a headphone/speaker jack splitter would work? Such a thing?

Yes you can get these BUT because you're splitting the same output the volumes will be the same for both outputs.

[pcuser42]

Yes you can get these BUT because you're splitting the same output the volumes will be the same for both outputs.

If the headphones have their own volume control it would work fine. It's just a cheap splitter in that case, even The Warehouse have them for $5. https://www.thewarehouse.co.nz/p/tec.../R2400015.html

[Agent_24]

It's going to be impossible to do this on a laptop because it's designed to drive either but not both at once. Cutting off the speakers when you insert anything into the headphone jack is by design.

Even if you took the thing apart and modified the circuit to drive both the speakers and headphone jack at once, it would still have the same volume for both so you don't solve the problem. Also the amplifier circuit likely wouldn't be happy as the impedance of both speakers and headphones in parallel may be too low.

The simplest and safest (for the laptop) option is a splitter cable, the headphones, and a pair of external (and amplified!) speakers.

[piroska]

If the headphones have their own volume control it would work fine. It's just a cheap splitter in that case, even The Warehouse have them for $5. https://www.thewarehouse.co.nz/p/tec.../R2400015.html

Thanks, we'll try it, cause he has headphones with volume control....
If not, well he'll have to use the desktop, which means buying a webcam and doing the settings all over again on that too....see how it goes today.

[piroska]

Got the splitter. He had 3 sets of headphones. One stuffed.
One generic, with mic and volume control. One standard set - Sennheiser.

The Sennheiser is way louder than the generic so it's perfect. She has those, my brother has the other and turns it down even more.

$5, solved. :-)

[Kame]

What operating system is on the laptop?

In linux using PulseAudio as the sound server (source) multiple peripherals can have sound output to it (sinks), e.g. headphones and speakers (onboard, bluetooth, hdmi out, line out, etc). With bluetooth however, you may have a slight latency issue, which you can also correct by slowing down whichever outputs are ahead.

Maybe windows can do similar with sources and sinks?