what's the deal with independant r.t.c headphones and speaker output?

so how do you go about using the independent r.t.c headphone device, and can it be used separately from the speakers? man this driver is buggy and confusing because I messed with the settings so much and for one they don't stick or save, and there doesn't seem to be a way to get sound from independent r.t.c headphone even if you set a program to use it exclusively while the rest of the system uses the speakers as the sound device. plus I've had issues where my external speakers, or headphones are hooked up, but the internal speakers continue to play sound. ? well they should just make internal speakers/headphones/external headphone outputs completely separate and an option to make them shared/play the same sound, and that would make configuration a lot easier. I imagine how nice it would be to bind primary system sound to the internal speakers, or Front Speakers/headphones on headphone jack 1, and then have headphone jack 2 be it's own completely separate sound device. Or something. Maybe even make the option to share the same audio across headphones at the same time as the speakers but at different volume levels. ugh, I thought it was going to work like that but none of the options seem to work as you'd think.

 

I've always wondered the same thing

 

Sorry to reviv the thread, but I found the answer

Real Time Communication (R.T.C.) refers to support for an axillary audio channel that allows output of two audio streams, simultaneously. If you plug headphones or external speaker(s) into the R.T.C. jack (further from mic jack) and play music. At the same time, you can make a VoIP call using the mic and primary headset jacks (or a bluetooth headset) without interrupting the music being output on the R.T.C. channel.


SO basically you can have music playing through one jack and have a converstation with a mic headset

 

It's a bugged feature, lacks too many controls and the IDT control panel always forgets your configuration so it's useless to set up. They tried to make it 'too easy' to use I suspect and hence it's missing all the necessary configuration and control options to make it work. The automatic method that it looks like it tries to use, doesn't work worth ...

IMO if anyone from IDT/dell boths to read this, get your together and fix the control panel because it doesn't 'remember' when you select the output type on the jacks, and there should be user-controlable options as to what happens when something is plugged in, including if the laptop internal speakers continue to play or not (that way music could continue to play even when using a jack as a communication jack rather than headphones or speakers, etc). There also needs to be more options to set what device plays to what port or speaker. In it's current implementation, none of this works. Heck and get rid of SRS or at least make the button to enable/disable it work and stick after you reboot.

 

You know I used to have that issue (all of them) with my 1640. But I don't with my 1645... The SRS option remembers now after I reboot, that was a major headache for me.. I also used the rtc jack perfectly with Skype. I never could before these new drivers.. Maybe it works with the newest madison based machines (yours isn't one as you have the 4670 GPU)...

One thing I could never test but wondered if it worked was the 5.1 surround that you can have set up by switching up what the jacks do in the IDT control panel. I do know HDMI out works great via the IDT panel so long as you go into the control panel and select HDMI as the default sound device once you hook up your cable.

 

dang guys. i just want to say that you are all lucky to have this feature at all.

I have a presonus firewire external sound card for lowering latency with live audio apps.
It has 4 inputs with 2 mic pre amps. and it has 4 outputs... but its impossible to run them independently. Its like a pro digital sound engineer card! I searched for sound cards with this capability found none!

honestly, you should all try a little DJing just because you can be listening a measure ahead while the beat is laying down

 

In theory it's a very good feature, basically giving you two sound cards, but it doesn't work very reliably in my experience, but I wasn't trying to use it as a communication device. I actually found it to be more of a nuisance because when playing music with headphones, I found that when I received a Skype call, it would transfer everything to the main speakers on the laptop, and sometimes sound would get so screwed up that it would rapidly switch between the headphones and internal speakers without any way of controlling it. It could use some work...