Generic/basic speaker and a headphone

[SleepingGiant]

Hi!

 

I was curious on what audio inputs at the back of the motherboards do, so I search and found out they are for surround sound or something.

 

I was wondering on how can I do that with a generic/basic speaker and my headphones(not the surround part) just to make them both work at the same time as an output. I tried plugging it in different I/O but with no luck so I tried searching in youtube all I got is a repeat on a tutorial of this (link) and I found another one with a subwoofer I think(which I don't have) (link)

 

Do i need extra software to do this?

info about the speaker: it only has 3.5mm for an input(that's basically it)
note: they are all wired

I know I can just buy a splitter. I'm just curious if I can do multiple speakers without it

 

Thank you!

[exhaustedbrit]

Are you referring the front panel headphone jack and the motherboard audio output? If your motherboard audio is Realtek, in the control panel you may be able configure them to play simultaneously. Beyond this I would advise getting a splitter or even getting something like an audio interface that has a stereo out and headphone jack.

But you technically can, you would need a virtual audio loopback device to set as your primary output device for your windows apps, and then have some software (like FL Studio/Cubase/Ableton) route the sound from that virtual device to your two separate devices. Technically possible but overkill and I don't know of any good freeware that lets you accomplish this on Windows. It's actually laughably easy on Macs, as there is a 'Create Multi-Output Device' option in the 'Audio MIDI Setup' that lets you accomplish this, I mention this as you might find success by googling for the windows equivalent and seeing if there's any less troublesome way of setting it up than what I've mentioned here.

[SleepingGiant]

15 minutes ago, exhaustedbrit said:

Are you referring the front panel headphone jack and the motherboard audio output?

I was thinking of using everything on the back of the motherboard

 

16 minutes ago, exhaustedbrit said:

If your motherboard audio is Realtek, in the control panel you may be able configure them to play simultaneously

Funny enough i tried plugging the extra speaker in the front panel and it cut off the audio output on the back panel. how can i do this as the last option?

I'm really new at this audio thing

can you please explain to me how to use this audio O/I on the back of the motherboard?

i am currently using 4 and 5 in the photo below for my headphones

[exhaustedbrit]

8 minutes ago, SleepingGiant said:

can you please explain to me how to use this audio O/I on the back of the motherboard?

i am currently using 4 and 5 in the photo below for my headphones

I see! I believe two may be in Microphone Input and Line Input - but the others are outputs for speakers - whilst typically for surround sound, your sound control panel might ask you what the device you've plugged in is, so by plugging in headphones and speakers into the output ports, selecting 'Speaker' in the prompt that appears should give the desired result. But to do all of this you really need to open and look at your audio control panel, not the windows one but rather the driver provided one (Realtek Control Panel/Realtek HD Audio etc)