How to separate headphones volume from laptop speaker volume?

[ubersoft]

I've installed Gutsy Tribe 5 on a brand-new laptop. Slowly but surely I'm working through all the little hardware quirks and inconsistencies. At the moment I only have two significant issues remianing, and the one I want to ask about right now has to do with the laptop's sound card.

The laptop has built-in speakers, a built-in microphone, and mic, headphone, and line in jacks.

Kmix lists the following channels:

Headphone
PCM
Front
Front Mic
Line
Microphone
Capture
Capture
Digital
Digital

Not all of them are used by my laptop, of course. There are no digital connectors, though I suppose if I ever get around to buying that 24 bit MAudio USB card that will come in handy. I have no idea whatsoever what the "Capture" channels are for.

Here is the specific nature of my problem: both the built-in speakers and the headphones jack seem to be connected. What I mean is, when I plug in my headphones the built-in speakers do not cut off.

My old laptop is like that as well, but with my old laptop the headphones jack and the built-in speakers are on separate channels, so I could mute the speakers and control the headphones volume separately. This does not appear to be the case with my new laptop -- there is no way to mute the speakers without also muting the headphones and vice versa.

Has anyone run into this before? Is this a bug in Gutsy, or is it a quirk with some laptops? Is there a workaround?

[lotech]

Re: How to separate headphones volume from laptop speaker volume?

Hi,

On my old Compaq desktop it has build in speaker, and there are 2 volume control to use on the mixer, master and mono out, where mono out is connected to the internal speaker and the master is for the external jack, I can select which one the mixer bar to control by right click on it, if I remember right both setting does not affect the other, it works like I've 2 sound card, but you may not see the same thing as different hardware.

[KristianK10]

Re: How to separate headphones volume from laptop speaker volume?

Is it really the case that we are the only experiencing this problem?

I haven't been able to sort this. The only workaround for me is to explictly mute the front speakers in kmix when I use headphones!

[Keleigh3000]

Re: How to separate headphones volume from laptop speaker volume?

I found this out by accident the other day while trying to figure out a different problem. In KMix go to the switches tab and turn on "Headphone Jack Sense". Headphone mute hadn't ever worked in Kubuntu on my Dell Desktop before. Hopefully, this works on your laptop, too.

[hadrurus]

Re: How to separate headphones volume from laptop speaker volume?

Hi,

I have similar problem, only my laptop has both speakers and headphones under PCM channel, I have no switch for jack sensor (it works under windows and ... Ubuntu ... ). Generally my headphones control is controlling nothing - i was trying various changes - but still no luck (on AC'97 chipset, laptop: Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo 5386 or sth like this)

regs
bat