Here's the problem:
I have a Creative Sound Blaster card (pretty old too, Creative AudioPCI
(ES1370) SB PCI 64/128(WDM)) and I have a front panel that has a
headphone jack, mic jack and 2 USB slots. I want to be able to disable
the speakers that are plugged into the sound at the back when I insert
headphones into the front panel headphone jack. Is there a way to do
this?
Dennis
Your card does not have jacks to accomodate this. You have
two options, both requiring a little hands-on adapter
sourcing or making:
1) Do without the ability to mute the rear output when
front jack is used and use a simple extension cable with
3.5mm minijack that plugs into the rear of the sound card,
goes in through a case slot bracket above or below it, and
terminates in a socket (of whatever type the front panel
needs to fit it).
2) Do above, but reverse engineer the front jack enough to
know whether it has switching contacts built into it. If it
does, it's possible to wire it such that the rear is muted,
so you would wire as previously described, from rear
minijack to front socket, then from the front socket back
again to a NEW jack for output to the speakers at the rear
of the case. if the front jacks aren't a switching type,
you would also need source switching jacks and possibly
devise a new mounting method if the (circuit board) current
mounting method for the installed jack is not sufficient to
accomodate the replacement jack, and it probably isn't else
the feature would be available already... so then you're
left to devise how to do that mounting as well.
With the switching jack previously described, the L & R
channels are routed to two normally closed contact switches
build into the new minijack, so they're closed and lead back
to the new rear port until you insert the miniplug into the
front jack, at which point the tip of the miniplug causes
the minijack switches to open and cut out the line back to
the rear. Of course, for this new rear jack you also need a
place to mount it but that's rather easy, just drill a hole
in a slot-bracket cover or even the case itself and use a
minijack with a threaded (& nut) neck to mount it.
If you're used to doing similar kinds of circuit board
mounting, wiring, soldering work, it's not hard but a little
tedious even if it doesn't take a long time, and if you
don't have the parts it may cost quite a bit to ship them if
you don't have a well-stocked Radio Shack or similar
available locally (and even then, I dont' recall if they
usually carry switching minijacks).
There might be better ways to do this...
Do you need "good" gaming 3D positional sound support (or
would you only game, if you do, with 2.1 or fewer speakers)?
If you don't need good gaming 3D audio effects support you
have more options for a replacement sound card. It will be
important to know what the case's front panel jacks are like
as well, as some cards might accept that connector from the
case without further modification- or maybe not, we dont'
know what yours is like, do you know this?
One random card with good output and known to have such a
pin header for front panel is a a chaintech AV-710, though
several cards do- i just can't recall which at the moment...
If you took a look at the pictures of sound cards at newegg
(the larger pics linked on each respective product page, not
just the tiny thumbnail images), you may be able to tell
which have the front panel header present- it's fairly
unmistakable, a dual row of about 10 -14 pins.
