Select speakers or headset for audio output?
 

I'd be very grateful if someone could point me in the right direction on this one...

I've just installed Skype on Fedora Core 4 and have connected a headset to my sound card. Skype works fine. The problem is that when the headset is plugged in, all other audio output from the computer is also directed to the headset, when I would prefer it to go to the speakers (connected to the same sound card).

Is there some way of specifying to the sound card that a particular audio source should be played via the speakers or via the headset? Does linux use a single address for the sound card (and the sound card then decides whether to play via speakers or headset) or does linux allow the speakers and headset to be addressed seperately?

My sound card is an ABIT Arcadia AU10.

I'd be very grateful for any suggestions.

Tim

If they're both plugged into the same output on the soundcard, then it's only going to work the way it's working at the moment.

What it sounds like you need is a USB headset. Using this, you may be able to pipe any input/output to/from Skype to the USB headset, while keeping the other programs going through the normal soundcard (haven't tried it myself though, so it's only speculation).

i use Skype myself (though i do have a seperate USB headset for this). i know there's a setting that allows you to specify the output device (hw:0,1 or such) so you set Skype to use the headset (possibly).

Depending on what sound system you're using you might be able to specify something similar (if you're using ALSA for instance you migt be able to set your .asoundrc to always use hw:0,0).

Thanks guys. A USB headset sounds like the solution.