Separate Front And Rear Audio Jacks Windows 10

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The problem: My computer was muting the rear 3.5mm jack (speakers) when the front 3.5mm jack (headphones) were plugged in. Alternately, the computer was treating the front and rear jacks as two separate audio streams rather than one simultaneous stream. I wanted to play all desktop sound from both jacks at the same time.

This Video is about How to Fix Front panel Audio Jack not detecting headphones Well as Microphones and Realtek Front Panel jack, not working Issues. Back on Windows 7 all you had to do was launch Realtek HD Audio Manager and check off 'Disable front panel jack detection' and you were good to go. That doesn't seem to be working with 10. I know Realtek is working fine because I can change other settings, but that one won't work. I think I've got the problem worked down to Windows setting.

The specs: Windows 8.1 64-bit, Realtek HD Audio Manager version 6.0.1.7373, Gigabyte Z97MX-GAMING 5 mATX motherboard

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Separate Front And Rear Audio Jacks Windows 10 Pro

The solution: In the Realtek HD Audio Manager (found in Control Panel > Hardware and Sound, or by typing “Realtek” into the Windows search bar), select the gear in the bottom right corner.

  1. Prior to resetting Windows 10 I had 3 audio outputs, HDMI to TV, analog to monitor and analog to speakers. Since resetting windows both speakers show up as one device labeled 'Speakers' in the Windows 'Playback Devices' window. I've tried re-installing the realtek software but it made no difference.
  2. This provided 2 separate audio playback devices for front and rear jacks and possibility to switch them from windows. Also, this is how the hd audio driver, provided by Microsoft Windows 10, behaves by default. Is it possible with UAD driver and Realtek Audio Console? I have Realtek ALC1220 on ASRock z370 Extreme4.
  3. In theory the Realtek driver has option settings to reconfigure this behavior, to let you use the rear and front jacks as separate devices. But my version didn’t have those settings, no “Playback Device” section at all. Following some cargo cult advice I solved this problem by just uninstalling Realtek entirely.

Under “Playback Device”, enable “Mute the rear output device, when a front headphone plugged in”. I realize this sounds counterproductive since we don’t want the rear device muted at all, but because of the way the driver settings work, we need this enabled. Enabling this setting will automatically disable the one below it. That’s fine.

Now, back in the main screen of the Realtek HD Audio Manager, click the wrench icon in the bottom right.

Separate Front And Rear Audio Jacks Windows 10 Media Player

Windows

Now enable the setting called “Disable front panel jack detection”. Once again, this sounds as if we’re muting the jack, but this is not the case.

You should now be hearing sound from both your front and rear audio jacks at the same time.