Linux: audio output to speakers or headphones?

Question

linux

Good afternoon,
I ran into this problem: I have a PC running Ubuntu, it has two sound jacks: a microphone and an audio output. The microphone is occupied by the microphone, and the audio output is taken by the speakers. There was a need to also connect headphones and be able to programmatically switch the sound between speakers and headphones. You cannot insert new boards into the PC, there are only USB ports.
It seems that external audio cards with multiple audio outputs (for example, 3.1 or 5.1 configuration) are needed to solve this problem, but I'm not sure, because. I don't have experience with them.
Do you have similar experiences or thoughts? Please share.

Answer 1

Buy a penny cable - a splitter for two jacks. I've been in a similar situation for a long time.

Answer 2

There are such cards.
Regarding software switching, if I'm not mistaken, then Pulse can.
I apologize in advance, not very competent in this matter, but I hope that at least a little helped.

Answer 3

pulse can handle this with ease.
plug in any USB sound that is supported by the pulse. Well, further on the situation - either gnome-volume-control (switches all sound), or pulse device chooser

Answer 4

Some motherboards with built-in audio have a connector (brush) for moving the audio jacks to the front panel. The Realtek driver (Venda) on my computer had the option of splitting outputs - so that both sockets were visible in the system as independent devices. The problem is that many programs are not designed to switch on the fly. Perhaps Virtual Audio Cable can solve it, but I have not dealt with it and am not going to mind the lack of Windows.
As for Linux - Ubuntu has this one , but it does not work - the front and rear jacks work as an analog output, and when I select headphones, both jacks are silent. Perhaps Linux just doesn't know how to work with my motherboard.
Look at the specifications of your motherboard, maybe you can do it.
And in extreme cases, you can solder a simple device that will switch channels and can be controlled programmatically.

Answer 5

but you can ask why do you need software switching between headphones and speakers?
Well, in the case, you can solve your problem in several ways:
on the forehead - buy a usb sound card to chop your ears to it, and in ubuntu, through pulseaudio / alsamixer, switch the sound output device.
the most correct solution is that all modern cases have usb and audio ports on the front panel, connect them to the motherboard and poke headphones there. if for your zvukovuhi firewood in ubuntu is full-fledged, then when you connect your ears, the speakers themselves will be cut down. well, if they themselves cannot, then again, through pulseaudio / alsamixer, we simply cut down the speaker channel / turn on the ears.
if the second option is not suitable, I would simply solder a small splitter with a switch and connect both speakers and ears through it.

Answer 6

At random, I came to the following algorithm for setting up the front audio panel:
1 Turn on the PC
2 Run alsamixer (in the terminal, enter alsamixer)
2.1 turn on headphone (press M)
2.2 set headphone to the maximum
2.3 close alsamixer
3 Connect headphones to the back panel
3.1 check if they work
3.2 if they work, then repeat paragraph 2
4 Insert the headphones into the front panel.