Headphones no longer cut out speaker.

[philfox]

I have installed Audacity today, and now, when I plug in my headphones, sound still comes out of my laptop speakers, which didn't happen before. It is an Acer Aspire 5551 running Windows 7 Home Premium. I have tried changing various settings in Control Panel > Sound, but cannot sort this out.
Any help would be appreciated.

[kozikowski]

Audacity Preferences > Recording > [ ]Overdub..., [ ]Hardware..., [ ]Software..., should be all be unchecked. Restart Audacity.

Koz

[kozikowski]

If it's still behaving badly, it has to be in the laptop settings. Does the laptop have sound settings or control panels different from Windows?

That's a very odd combination. That's usually a hardware switch, not software. Some computers use software routing and it's possible to get those confused. When you run Audacity, what output device does it say it's using?

Koz

[philfox]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'Does the laptop have sound settings or control panels different from Windows?'

When I go into Control Panel and Sound, I get the window showing tabs 'Playback' 'Recording' 'Sounds' and 'Communications'.

As far as my Audacity settings are concerned, I am currently showing the following setting in Output Device 'Speakers (Realtek High Defini'. The only other choice is Microsoft Sound Mapper - Output'

Thanks

[steve]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'Does the laptop have sound settings or control panels different from Windows?'

Have a look at the little icons near the Time/Date. (some of the icons may be hidden).
There should be at least one "Loudspeaker" icon. There may be two. Check thoroughly the available options by right and left clicking on those icons.
It's quite common for there to be two different loudspeaker icons. One of which is the normal Windows settings and the other which is a custom sound setting control panel for your sound card. Some of the controls in one will be the same as the other and some will be different. Sorry I can't be more specific but it's a bit of a mess really and different machines have different settings in different place.

[philfox]

I have one speaker icon.

When I right click on icon and select:

1. Volume mixer, there are 3 controls - device Speakers, Applications, System Sounds, and Plugin Container for Firefox
2. Playback devices, there are 2 devices showing - Realtek HDMI Output (Properties, Not Plugged in, but enabled), and Speakers (Selected and enabled, Controller information - Realtek High Definition Audio; Jack Information, LR ATAPI Internal ATAPI Jack)

[steve]

Have a look in the Windows Control Panel (Classic View) and see if there is an icon for Realtek in there.

[philfox]

There is one called 'Realtek HD Audio manager'

[Gale Andrews]

There is one called 'Realtek HD Audio manager'

So look in there on the playback side for an image of the headphones jack. There may be a switch to control what it does that is set to "Front speaker out" or similar. Set it to "Headphone". "Front speaker out" is usually intended as a way to play through both the headphones and the speakers at the same time.



Gale

[philfox]

I've come to the conclusion that this is indeed a hardware problem.
In the Realtek HD Audio Manager, under 'Analog', there is a red icon for the mic in socket, and a green icon representing the headphones socket.

If I plug my earphones in to mic socket, the red icon 'lights up', but when I plug them into headphones socket, green icon stays 'unlit'.

Thanks for all the help and advice.