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 Post Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2020 10:20 pm 
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This is in relation to another thread of mine but I decided it was really a different question. The other thread is here:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2416

I just wonder if it is possible to have two different sound devices set as active at the same time. Just playing around with my sound settings applet this seems doubtful.

I do and will often switch between my main sound and a headset. I would love to have both active at the same time but can't really see how to do this. This is not a big deal as I have the sound applet pinned to my Start Menu and it is a simple two click to change. It would just be nice to not have to change audio sources.

Any thoughts??

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 11:10 am 
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I assume that you mean that you want to play a movie and have the sound come from both the speakers and the headset.
I was not aware of any built-in way to have 2 devices active for the same source. However, a search uncovered a procedure that might work as it was reported by more than one source.
https://techzillo.com/multiple-audio-outputs-playing-simultaneously/

That article lists a program that can do it, too. https://www.vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/index.htm

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 1:20 pm 
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Tried the first link and it failed, possibly needs a re-boot.

I'm going to try Voice Meeter as I'm sure I'll want an equalizer for the new headset I'm getting and I really don't know what kind of software comes with the set if any.

I don't exactly want to have the sound come from both devices at the same time. I just want to be able to hit mute on the clicker for my Yamaha system and put on the headset without having to go through the sound applet to change devices each time.

<edit>
Voice Meeter did the trick. I have to have it start with Windows and reside in the System Tray but that is fine. :) The reason it has to start with Windows is that Voice Meeter actually becomes the default audio device. So, actually, there is still only one sound output but the output device allows multiple inputs.

Oh, it does include a 15 band equalizer but I don't see any sense in playing with it until the headset arrives. ;)

Thanks Steve!

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 4:35 pm 
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Cool! You're welcome.

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 6:33 pm 
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The Voice Meeter (the two 'e's is how they spell it) is donation-ware which means that it can be used for free but donations are accepted. If it all works out well I'll send them 10 or 15 bucks. Hey, fair is fair. If I find it useful it is only right to send them something.

The thing seems to do a lot. Below will be an image with the menu options open and another of the equalizer. The 'BUS A & B' buttons on the equalizer allows different equalizer settings for both output devices. The software appears to allow three inputs (one virtual) and two outputs.

I had to look up 'VBAN' but it seems that it allows for audio streaming between different computers on a local network.
Voice Meeter wrote:
VBAN, The VB-Audio Network Protocol, VBAN Protocol has been designed for real-time transport of digital audio stream in IP-based network environments. VBAN allows to send or / and receive audio to / from other computers of any local networks. Voicemeeter already allows easy way to manage several incoming / outgoing streams.

It also allows for saving and loading different configurations. LOL! Another something new to play with. It will be nice if the config save/load includes equalizer settings. If so I would be able to use different configurations for movies, sports and music.

I think it may be wise on my part to download the manual. :mrgreen:

Attachment:
voicemeeter.jpg
voicemeeter.jpg [ 171.08 KiB | Viewed 7568 times ]


Attachment:
equalizer.jpg
equalizer.jpg [ 46 KiB | Viewed 7567 times ]

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 7:32 pm 
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It sure seems to be well worth a donation if it does what you want and more! I'd never heard of VBAN. I may have to look into that...

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 7:40 pm 
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Dang! I just skimmed through the 65 page manual and this thing does a LOT! It seems that you can even use it to mix 3 audio sources into one for such applications as a pod cast or SKYPE conference. There are some things it can do that I don't understand at all.

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 10:13 pm 
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I have found a slight glitch with the software I will likely use to control my main and headset audio that being Voice Meeter...

Anticipating that I'd want to go with a powered USB hub, as the sound card for the new headset will draw power, and I don't like to stress the power supplied by system USB ports, I set that up this evening and lost both my main and current headset sound. I had to select another output and then go back to what I actually wanted for it to work again. Still I don't really consider this to be an issue as once things are set up they are set up and not likely to change.

I will say that going to the powered USB hub cleared up my floor a bit. In my previous setup I had a USB extension cable connected to a front USB port on my main system. This is still the case but the self powered USB hub I switched to has a long cable that enabled me to go from three cables across my living room floor to one. The previous passive hub had no cable. I was able to run the power cord for the powered USB hub behind an easy chair 90 degrees apposed from my couch. I then ran the current headset and game pad cables under the chair. The total setup actually gives me longer cable length than I had previously. Since the self powered hub has 7 ports I may just leave both headsets attached. The reason that I might use both headsets is for music. The old set, just being stereo, would then be just for music. Don't know about anyone else but I sort of prefer straight stereo for music over surround sound.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 1:02 pm 
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Sigh, Voice Meeter looked to have such possibilities but I had to remove it as it kills Power DVD which I need for Blu-Ray disks. :( Back to switching devices...

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 1:34 pm 
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Jay, now I'm losing much of the right-hand text on all these postings relating to two sound devices. What gives?

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 2:31 pm 
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bbarry wrote:
Jay, now I'm losing much of the right-hand text on all these postings relating to two sound devices. What gives?

Probably because of a long link in a post. I changed it to use the [url] BBCode which should help.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 4:23 pm 
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That didn't help. And I did see a long link in one of Steve's post. That link was long enough to stretch from Wed afternoon to Fri morning, lol.

But you and Steve are smart enough to be entitled to long links.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 4:42 pm 
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bbarry wrote:
That didn't help. And I did see a long link in one of Steve's post. That link was long enough to stretch from Wed afternoon to Fri morning, lol.

But you and Steve are smart enough to be entitled to long links.

You MAY have to refresh the page to see any difference and, even then, no promises. Unfortunately I'm having a problem finding the line of code I modified to not truncate links.

It may also be your browser's set zoom level. I get the same issue in Edge and Vivaldi but not Firefox. There are two differences in the browsers.
1) I have the zoom level set higher in Edge and Vivaldi than I do in Firefox. If I set the zoom in either Edge or Vivaldi to 100% the issue goes away. It may actually be two image attachments in one of my posts that cause the issue as they appear larger in Edge and Vivaldi than in Firefox with my zoom set to 125% in Edge and Vivaldi.

2) Edge and Vivaldi both use the Chrome rendering engine where Firefox does not.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 4:58 pm 
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Jay, I don't think it's Vivaldi's zoom level, as it only happens with the long links like Steve's above. I never have any problems
with Vivaldi's zoom level.....I love that browser.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 5:12 pm 
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bbarry wrote:
Jay, now I'm losing much of the right-hand text on all these postings relating to two sound devices. What gives?


I didn't like how long that link was when I pasted it originally. I just removed a whole long part of it that appeared to be excess and it was excess. That should stop the page spread on this thread, I hope.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 5:13 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
Sigh, Voice Meeter looked to have such possibilities but I had to remove it as it kills Power DVD which I need for Blu-Ray disks. :( Back to switching devices...


Well, that sure sucks. Do you know why it interferes with PowerDVD?

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 5:19 pm 
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sboots wrote:
jaylach wrote:
Sigh, Voice Meeter looked to have such possibilities but I had to remove it as it kills Power DVD which I need for Blu-Ray disks. :( Back to switching devices...


Well, that sure sucks. Do you know why it interferes with PowerDVD?

My best guess is that it sets itself up as an actual sound device and, for it to work, you have to have it set as default in the Sound Applet. My guess is that the sound device is not compatible with Power DVD.

I should probably re-install Voice Meeter and see if Power DVD works with another sound device selected.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 5:35 pm 
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I'm not a movie buff and don't own any Blu-ray discs. However, it is my understanding that the VLC Media Player will play
unencrypted DVDs and Blu-ray's.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 5:51 pm 
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VLC can potentially play a Blu-Ray but takes a lot of manipulation. Been a long time since I've tried to get it working so a more recent version may have the ability automatically included.

The above said I now have Power DVD and Voice Meeter working together. :dunno:

First I took a look through Programs and Features and saw that Seagate's Disk Wizard was still installed and removed the thing. I only installed to make a recovery disk. Can't really see where this would matter but Disk Wizard is Acronis and a bit intrusive.

Next I re-installed Voice Meter and checked how I had it setup. There is a feature called "Macro Buttons" that seem to be something different than what it sounds. I figured it was something like keyboard shortcuts but seems not the case. It looks to be more of a command system where you can setup scripting code. I had Macro Buttons set to start with Voice Meeter but disabled it this time.

I can't really say why but Voice Meter and Power DVD seem to be playing nice with each other now. Was it Disk Wizard? Was it the Macro Buttons within Voice Meeter? I have no idea but it is working again.

<edit>
I tried updating VLC and it still won't play a Blu-Ray out of the box. There seems to be a Codec pack that I could install to allow but Power DVD plays out of the box. Since I seem to have all the software playing nice together now I don't see a need to go through the hoops to get VLC working although I may in the future.

All is now working together even after several re-boots. I did just do a clone backup while things are working in case I break something again. :mrgreen:

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 8:00 pm 
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Glad to read that it appears that they now play nicely together after some poking despite not knowing which poke resolved the issue. ;-)

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 8:19 pm 
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sboots wrote:
Glad to read that it appears that they now play nicely together after some poking despite not knowing which poke resolved the issue. ;-)

Sigh, I wish that I could give a real answer as to what caused the initial issue. I re-enabled the Macro Buttons within Voice Meeter and Power DVD was still fine but I didn't do a re-boot.

I didn't re-install Seagate's Disk Wizard to test and probably won't. Still, with having set the Voice Meeter back to when I was having issues and all being good I have to suspect Disk Wizard. After all it is actually Acronis and hooks into system areas that it has no business doing.

Shoot, it could even be that I installed the new headset's software before re-installing Voice Meeter... :dunno:

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 Post Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 1:36 pm 
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Jay I've had to turn my zoom down to 90% to fix the long posts, I use Edge on Windows 10 2004. This is on my 15.6" Laptop don't know what it would be like on my desktop, that has a 21" monitor.

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 Post Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2020 5:49 pm 
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JoanA wrote:
Jay I've had to turn my zoom down to 90% to fix the long posts, I use Edge on Windows 10 2004. This is on my 15.6" Laptop don't know what it would be like on my desktop, that has a 21" monitor.

Sorry but I don't know that I can really do a lot to solve this. Unless Steve gives other input as to browsers it seems restricted to Edge and Vivaldi but not Firefox. Even removing long links does not work as an image attachment can still cause the issue. Mayhaps I could solve that by lessening the allowed width of an image attachment but that risks previous attachments becoming invalid. From testing I see one common factor as to having this issue and that is the Chrome rendering engine. BTW, Internet Explorer also has no issue. From all I can see it has to be the Chrome engine which, from some things I've read, does not follow W3C standards.

<edit>
One must also understand that these forums are running on software that is no longer supported. I do the best that I can with it but can't upgrade to the current version of the software for two reasons.

1) The site appearance would totally change which is not a big issue with me.

2) In the past I have tried upgrading to a recent version of the forum software and it has always failed. The data base will just not update for use in the newer version of the software. Sure, I could still do it but ALL threads, user logins and posts would be lost. I just don't see that as acceptable.

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 Post Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2020 8:00 pm 
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I don't know of a solution and agree that it's a browser issue with the way it renders a long URL. And, as you noted, even a large image will cause the browser to expand the width of a thread. I think that it happens infrequently enough that it isn't worth worrying about. If you can eventually find the code that you disabled for shrinking a URL, reversing that change would help some of the occurrences, but I wouldn't go crazy trying to find it and risking breaking something! It is acceptable as it is now. :-)

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 Post Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2020 8:10 pm 
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sboots wrote:
I don't know of a solution and agree that it's a browser issue with the way it renders a long URL. And, as you noted, even a large image will cause the browser to expand the width of a thread. I think that it happens infrequently enough that it isn't worth worrying about. If you can eventually find the code that you disabled for shrinking a URL, reversing that change would help some of the occurrences, but I wouldn't go crazy trying to find it and risking breaking something! It is acceptable as it is now. :-)

Steve, I really see this as a Google issue and their instance of thinking everything they do is what should be. The Google/Chrome browser engine just does not follow the W3C standards. Doing a site check through W3C this site is still compliant with current standards. I just can't see anything else but the Chrome Engine being the cause of the issue. I can't do anything about that...

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