Gaming Tech: Speakers for game, Headset for VOIP
 

Good evening all,

I've wondered for many years how to do this as simple as possible. I want to have my game audio coming through my speakers, but to simplify things, I want Ventrilo and VOIP audio coming through a headset. I've given this some thought - would this be possible with a simple bluetooth headset and adapter? I already have speakers and a generic onboard sound card solution, so if I just got a cheap bluetooth headset and mic thing with a USB adapter, would that be a viable solution?

The VOIP comm does not have to be stereo, mono would really be preferred. Plus it would make me feel badass. An attached microphone isn't necessary, I currently just use my webcam. But having voice feeds injected directly into my ear would ease up on the feedback I get and would allow me to turn up game volume to hear intimate details, while I'd still be able to know what people in Ventrilo were saying without blowing my ears out.

So if you've got suggestions, let me know :) Thanks guys!

What you want is fairly simple to accomplish. A USB headset would indeed do the job, or you can add a $15 sound card and use any headset with a pair of miniplugs. Simply set up Ventrilo to use the sound card tied to your headset and you're good to go.

In games where the voice chat is a built in function it gets more complicated. Whether and how to do this is going to vary based on which game you're playing.

I had an amazing USB headset from Logitech. I had two, actually. What happened? The cord was absolute shit and was destroyed. It happened twice. They refunded the first but not the second. I was pissed, such a horrible design :(

I typically don't use the voice chat in game (main games I play these days are CS:S and TF2) but yeah, I don't think that'd work too well.

Thanks though, if anyone else has any cheap suggestions, let me know :) I probably could get a sound card from an old PC and use a pair of plugs but I don't have the PC here.

I think this is just a driver bug I have, but I have my headset plugged into the front audio ports on my computer and my speakers plugged into the sound card in the back. They're both playing stereo sound at all times and the microphone is always hooked up. When I want speakers, I turn them on and leave the headphones on the floor. When I want headset, I just turn the speakers off and I'm good to go.

I have a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeGamer... not sure if that makes a difference but I've found that the front audio ports are an easy way to run my speakers and headset simultaneously.

Plantronics DSP-500, they discontinued that model, but have a DSP750 which has miniplugs and USB

this is a variant of it. it has been worth every dollar I spent on it.


I have Warcraft/TF2/L4D going through my speakers and ventrilo going through my headset.

That's no bug, that's the way it should work. He's trying to have different audio on the speakers and the headset though so it's nothing like what you do. He wants regular game audio to come through the speakers with no voice/chat audio and then he wants the headset to have the voice/chat audio only with no game sound/music. Easily done on my machine but I believe it's a feature of the built-in sound card so ymmv.

AFAIK, all of my systems with front-panel audio are set to short from the front plug -- i.e., if you plug headphones into the audio jack in the front, it shorts the audio output normally going out of the back, and therefore your speakers shouldn't play. But maybe some systems do both and rely on you to turn the speakers off?

Anyway, thanks again everyone. The Plantronics headset is nice, but we'll see. I have a friend of mine who, coincidentally wants a new headset. He currently has a USB headset that only has one ear working, so I may barter him some pizza to get it ... haha

Yeah that sounds like a hardware feature. It would need a separate mixer or output to do that, and many consumer soundcards only have one output.