Front panel speaker jack does not mute rear jack.

[barrydrake]

Hi there .... My pcspecialist box has an Asus M4A78LT-M LE mobo. I've used a mike in the front panel jack a few times, but as I'm now using voip quite a lot, I got a headset. I was quite surprised to find that the front phones jack seems to be directly in parallel with the rear speaker socket, so if I want only the headphones working, I have to power off the speakers. Is this a normal arrangement these days? I've been used to plugging phones in and automatically disconnecting the rear speaker socket. Only a tiny inconvenience, but I do wonder if there's a quick and easy workaround? Can't see anything useful in the BIOS settings or in the mobo manual. Any thoughts?

Regards, Barry.

 

[Fear]

Think what you need to do is right click on the speaker icon on the taskbar the select sound device then choose which you want and then set as default.

 

[barrydrake]

Would be nice - all it does if I select 'headphones' is to mute the speaker on both the front and rear sockets. That's why I'm convinced the two jacks are just in parallel. Looking at the mobo front panel audio connector in the manual, it doesn't seem to have a 'mute rear' connection like the older boards used to have. Ah well, I can manage! Thanks for your quick reply though. I don't think the mobo has a 'headphones' output as such. Pity, when it goes to the trouble of having the front and rear mike jacks separately selectable.
Regards Barry.

 

[Fear]

right i can't remember the options properly a the moment my desktop is away getting a new motherboard fitted but on the device list you should have spdif and an spdif HD or something like that i think the spdif is normally the rear jack and the spdif HD is the front just give that a try.

 

[barrydrake]

Ah ... but I only have a rear HDMI port, and I'm not using that. I'm using the analogue card with front and rear jacks, not the spdif digital hdmi port. There doesn't seem to be the same option on that arrangement. BTW, I'm not using MS Windows, so things like 'taskbar' don't mean a lot to me apart from old memories. But I do have a speaker icon on my top panel and this takes me to a full featured sound preferences window which does much the same thing. Thanks again for your quick response. Regards, Barry.

 

[JakAttack]

Good morning Barry, you will have an audio setup program called Via Hdeck or Realtek control panel, something along those lines, when you open this go to the advanced options and there will be an option for this, make sure it is enabled. If you can't see it have a good look around in the prgram, it's there somewhere.

If you don't have this program, you can install it from the M4A78LT-M disk by popping it in and going to the drivers section, then follow the above.

If all the above is set right, restart the PC and tap Del on bootup to get to the BIOS, in here go to the Advanced section, then go to Onboard Devices Configuration, you should have your onboard sound on here, underneath there will be an option for Front Panel Support, make sure this is set to HD Audio and not AC97, if it is set to AC97 change it over. Then press F10 to save and exit (only if you had to change the option).

Hopefully this will help!

 

[barrydrake]

Thanks for your reply. I think you've answered my question. Yes, the BIOS was already set up as you described. I had tried switching to AC97 with no difference. The other suggestions you make apply only to Microsoft Windows; which I do not have. If you are saying that Windows can provide muting of the rear jack, then my problem is one I will have to look at with the Ubuntu team. The 'Sound Preferences' panel in Ubuntu does offer a lot of settings, but most of those are for surround sound. The only relevant one offers 'headphones' but in my case mutes both front and rear jacks .... So thanks for that, I guess I have an Ubuntu bug to look at! Regards, Barry.

 

[JakAttack]

As far as I can see there is only Ubuntu support on VIA audio at a basic level, they seem to have good drivers for the integrated GPU and on v9.10 and below they have special support for Ethernet and that's yer lot I'm afraid, it's part of the HD Audio package on Windows (introduced and combined with the UAA High Def package they did back in the XP days). I'm not sure of any Linux equivalent driver or setup, I'm not really a Linux man, I might have been 7-10 years ago back in the RedHat/SuSe days but not now I became a gamer and had to revert to Windows

 

[barrydrake]

Actually, the built in support for VIA is now excellent - except for this one shortcoming. Now I know the problem is in the VIA chipset driver, I know what to do. Thanks for putting me right. Sorry you had to go back to Windows because you're a gamer. We lose quite a few good folk for that reason. But it is one very valid reason for sticking with the OS. Thanks again.