It sounds to me like your speakers have a defect; my recommendation would be to replace them with something that operates as intended. I have a headphone output on my speakers and get proper stereo sound when I connect to them. Though if you can get a mixer for less than replacement speakers, more power to you I guess.

If you do have multiple input sources, not just outputs, many speakers have an AUX in jack as well, which will mix together. I use it for my midi sound module (MT32 or SC88VL).

My speakers are the Creative Gigaworks T40 Series II, but I also have a smaller set of Creative Inspire T12 speakers in my bedroom with the same features.

Other manufacturers are doing this too. My Dad recently got some Bose Companion® 2 Series III speakers which have an AUX in jack as well as headphone output.

zerker wrote:

It sounds to me like your speakers have a defect; my recommendation would be to replace them with something that operates as intended. I have a headphone output on my speakers and get proper stereo sound when I connect to them. Though if you can get a mixer for less than replacement speakers, more power to you I guess.

My speakers are retro, and I think the mono output of the headphone jack is intentional. I believe these are them:
http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/Altec-La … 96/product.html

Overall they sound very good. Just no stereo from the headphone jack.

Well, intentional or not, I'd consider it a design flaw. It doesn't look like they owe you anything; my recommendation is still to replace them with something that gives you stereo sound out of the headphone jack. Certainly the simplest solution in my mind.

I use a Roland SC-7 to combine SB with GM. It has an auxiliary audio input. 😀

Yeah, that's true. Many Midi sound modules can also act as mixers. My SC88VL also has audio in and a front headphone jack, I just don't have it configured this way.

zerker wrote:

Well, intentional or not, I'd consider it a design flaw. It doesn't look like they owe you anything; my recommendation is still to replace them with something that gives you stereo sound out of the headphone jack. Certainly the simplest solution in my mind.

zerker, I appreciate your responses. To be fair, I am not looking to replace the speakers. I rather like them as they are a good combination of retro and sound quality. And since they are connected to a pure-DOS PC, the retro look is important. 😉

I was more interested in hearing about what people who use external mixers are using.

Cheers!

I use an external mixer from Phonic. It has 4 stereo inputs and I really like it 😀

If you only have one audio signal, and you want it to go to two devices, a mixer might be overkill. Depending on the specs of the audio output, you might be able to get away with just a 3.5mm double-adapter so you can leave your speakers and headphones connected all the time to the single output from the card.

You'd of course get no volume control for the headphones (apart from the card's internal mixer) so it may not be ideal for what you want to achieve, but it's probably the cheapest option!

zerker wrote:

It sounds to me like your speakers have a defect

You were partially right. After inserting and removing the headphone jack a few times, it cleared up the sound and stereo worked again.

Regardless, I am still curious about external mixers as it can be a pain to adjust volumes between the headphones and speakers. And with the Creative MIXERSET utility, it's tough to get good volume without introducing a lot of hiss. I would imagine an external mixer/amp would be able to help with that.

Thanks!

An external mixer/amp may not necessarily help - Creative cards were quite noisy so if you use an external amplifier you will probably get better results over any amplifier built into the card, but there will still be a lot of noise and hiss on the outputs.

The only way to avoid that is to use a more modern card, or use one with SPDIF output and an external DAC. It wasn't until the SBLive was introduced that Creative made a big fuss about all the hiss and background noise going away.

You can test this by turning the volume all the way up in MIXERSET (to get the strongest audio signal over the background noise), then listening to the line-out connector (which should have no amplifier on it.) If you plug your powered speakers into that and turn up the volume on the speakers themselves, then that's about the lowest level of hiss you'll get with that card (assuming of course the powered speakers have a good low-noise amp in them.)

To test the quality of the speakers, unplug them from the PC and then turn the volume up, and you should hear nothing at all. If you start to hear hiss (which you almost certainly will near the top of the volume range), then that's due to the amplifier in the speakers themselves. Don't forget to turn the volume back down before you plug them back into the PC 😉