Hi guys,

Ive also had the same problems with my Vaio VGN-FE790G laptop. It came installed with XP and I had no problems in swapping automatically between my speakers and headphones (when they were plugged in they would take over the from the speakers with sound output). I got a free offer with the laptop to upgrade to vista home premium which I decided to try. After upgrading I was presented with the annoyance of sticking sound devices as described here. (If I was using my speakers initially with an application and decided I wanted to swap to my headset I would have to exit the application and start it again with the headphones plugged in. I took the advice of one of the posters on this thread to update my sound card driver (I only had the default Vista HD audio device driver installed). The laptop uses the SIGMATEL audio chip. So I downloaded and installed the Official Sigmatel Vista driver and low and behold the sound output now automatically swaps between headset and speakers without restarting the application. For anyone that is having problems with sound output not automatically swapping between speakers and headset and you are using the default Vista sound driver, I would recommend finding out what Audio chip you Motherboard has and download the proper driver.

Ways to find out what audio chip you have:-

If you have a purchased name branded system (for example Dell, HP, Compaq etc…) enquire with the manufacturer. Check there website for Drivers for your model number.
If you have a Clone build system, find out what motherboard (for onboard sound) or what sound card you have installed. (Check any documentation you got with your system or failing that enquire at the place you purchased the system for tech specs of motherboard or sound card. Failing this you could open up the system and look for manufacturer name and/or model number printed on either the motherboard or sound card).

I have a notebook that has HDMI and I have to do the same to switch from TV to headphones….are these people asleep that design this. And why can't you make a permanent shortcut to switch them without x>y>z>q>p>f>o?

All MSFT would have to do is design their sounds system the same way you do it physically, Sound from each source going via a virtual mixer to one or all speakers or phones and switchable on the fly. It would just require the starting of multiple instances of something like the current Sound in the background, one time for each source and each with its respective default setup. All that is necessary is to pipe sound though its own Sound instance then redirect the sound to outputs as directed by that instance and by default not allow any one instance take control of a sound output device unless desired by the user. Windows already alows more than one sound source playing through whatever speakers are playing. Each instance of Sound when visible would be titled something like this – Media Player Sound Manager, Brouser Sound Manager (They ever hear of internet radio at MSFT?), USB Source 1 Sound Manager, etc. Same thing in the reverse direction for various mic sources, like headphones, installed mics, bluetooth mic/headsets, etc. All of this is not rocket science in spite of what MSFT would like you to believe. They just need an actual user somewhere in the sound department of MSFT to tell them what a user might ultimately need in the way of functionality. Then put the geeks in the dept to work making it happen. They get paid big bucks to do cheap stuff like this. MSFT get off your a… and do it. This should have been handled when MSDOS was young.

I've had multiple Vista installs and never had a problem with this – I've reinstalled Vista and am now stuck with this horrible setup between headphones and SPDIF Out. It is a driver issue – previously I just launched the Realteck Control Panel and changed an option so that the audio always went out of both interfaces at the same time. I have the newest audio drivers but the option is gone, since the CP looks a little different – I guess I'll have to dig through my HDD to see if I still have older ones that work. nVidia n790i Ultra mobo here.

Everyone, dynamic switching is being added to Windows 7 (yay!), but vote here for what we all want: simultaneous output to more than one device:
http://www.windows7taskforce.com/view/76

It was working fine for me when Vista was fresh installed. About a two months it is not working anymore…
I mean before when I plugget in my headphones, it becomes active automaticaly. Now I have to switch it manually…. So if it was working in the past there must be a way how to make it working again!

Same here. But in my case, i upgraded my system from vista business to vista ultimate. Now it wont switch automatically like it was before. During a song playback (with a headset) it stops when i pulled the headset out when it suppose to play continually with the speaker (i'm using vaio laptop anyway). And same thing vice-versa, speaker to headset. I tried installing different drivers but still nothing happens. Please advice, anyone out there.

Vista have to my surprise a very good audio management system. It is true, you cannot play audio into more then one audio device because that is how the OS is designed. Same thing applies with XP and Linux unless you do serious hacking up of ALSA. If your using SPDIF, HDMI, or standard Audio Out on a stereo mini-jack you shouldn’t need to output through another media for the same content since you should only *need* to use one device since one device can do surround, it is a waste of resources. I used to have to audio cards in my desktop and used one that was hooked up to my stereo for WMP and everything else on my headset.