How to get sound for speakers and headphone separate ?

[Blagard]

With the current sound system there are the four main sliders that you can independantly assign to speakers or headphones. To the right of the sliders are drop boxs for what your PC has in terms of sound processing. So as I understand it, if you just have an onboard audio chip in your PC you cannot actually make your slider headphone/speaker selections work. It will get mixed into the one output

I think my PC has an Realtec AC97 chip. Although I see two items in each drop box for both speaker and headphones I think the selection is irrelevant because they are the same processor i.e my Realtec audio chip output is in fact also my primary audio output. So I don't actually have a choice of two at all.

Assuming (Dangerous I know!) I have got it right so far. What would I need to do (or add) to my PC to keep speaker and headset outputs separate? The reason I ask is that I know people sometimes put a sound card in as well as, (or instead of) the audio chip, but thought this might bring about other conflicts in the PC set up because the solutions I heard of would be to disable the onboard chip in the BIOS, leaving you back with just one sound processing chip on a card.

So can an Expert decipher my laymans explanation and advise 

[Knite]

Two different paths you can take...

You can purchase a sound card, and have both the internal sound and sound card work at the same time. Plug the speakers into one of sets of outputs, and plug the headset into the other set...

OR

Purchase a USB headset. That will show up as it's own sound card. You can then set the Vox to use the USB sound card, and the game to use the internal sound card's sound for the speakers.



Of course, you could always buy a soundcard, turn OFF your internal sound via BIOS, and then buy a USB headset... but that can get a big expensive and confusing if you aren't careful. 

[Blagard]

Purchase a USB headset. That will show up as it's own sound card. You can then set the Vox to use the USB sound card, and the game to use the internal sound card's sound for the speakers.

Thanks. It shows my technical ignorance that I didn't know the USB headset would appear as it's own sound card.  

EDIT: Readers please be aware that using a USB headset may give you problems reported elsewhere in the forum. It's really a question of trying it to see if it affects you!