# Solved: Frustrating Sound Device Problem



## knipp_john (Nov 3, 2012)

Hello, I just received my HP ProBook 4530s yesterday and have been struggling with an annoying problem in the playback devices settings. I am running windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

The problem I'm encountering is that I cannot set my headset as the default playback device in the sound settings. I right click the speaker icon in the bottom right, choose playback devices, and it shows two items.

Speakers / HP
IDT High Definition Audio CODEC
Default Device

Communications Headphones
IDT High Definition Audio CODEC
Default Communications Device

Now, I want all sound to be played through my headphones by default instead of the speakers, so what I attempt to do, is right click the Communications Headphones, and select "Set as default device," but when I do so, nothing happens. the speakers remain the default device and the headphones remain the default communications device. I can set the speakers as the default communications device, but cannot set headphones as just the default device. It's as if the software on my laptop will not allow me to change the default device in the playback devices settings. Any help resolving this issue would be awesome, as this is very frustrating.


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## pip22 (Nov 21, 2004)

There is no need for such an option on most laptops/notebooks because when you plug in a set of headphones, the speakers are automatically muted (or at least they should be). If they don't mute automatically when headphones are plugged in, something is wrong with the internal hardware or the headphone jack.


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## knipp_john (Nov 3, 2012)

That's what I had thought. Last night, it was acting up, I was trying to play a video game, and the sound was coming from the speakers and not the headphones when all other sound was coming through headphones. I can't go into the options of the game and select which audio device it uses, so I had thought that I needed to change the default audio device to headphones for the game to play through the headphones. However, today when I tried it again, the game played through the headphones instead of the speakers, so I don't know what was going on last night, I was very frustrated with what was going on.


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## knipp_john (Nov 3, 2012)

Ugh, thought it had fixed itself, but it has not. It seems that whenever I open a "communications program" it plays that program through the headphones and switches everything else to the speakers....

EDIT: Finally resolved the issue. It was not a problem with the hardware, or even the drivers themselves. It was a setting in skype. When I had the headphones selected as the speaker device in skype, it caused the problem mentioned earlier, but when I selected speakers, skype, and everything else still plays out of headphones.


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