I have a Chaintech AV-710. I use it for music and use Kernal Streaming in foobar2000. It works great for that. Naturally, if any other sound is played by anything else, the music will be interrupted. I've tried turning off all Windows sounds, but then decided to just enable my onboard sound and have everything else play silently into that since nothing was connected to it.

However, some of my programs and games don't allow me to change the audio device from the Windows default one, and others work better with the onboard sound since they sound choppy with my AV-710. I decided to get a y-connector and hook both sound cards up to my speakers. It works, except the music coming from the AV-710 is really low and muffled while the stuff coming from the onboard are at normal volume. I tried swapping the cables around and everything. Even when no sound is coming from the onboard jack, it makes the AV-710 one really low. It goes back up to normal volume as soon as I unplug the cable from the onboard sound.

What in the world is going on and how can I remedy this?

You're driving a signal into the output of your sound card. This isn't a good idea.

Why not set your default device to the onboard sound?

The Y-cable is definitely a bad solution. But why not just do this - get one of those cheap $10 to $15 computer speaker sets just for the Windows sounds. Most of them are pretty small. Shouldn't be hard to fit them in somewhere.

Edit: I've seen them at flea markets for $3 to $5.

Nevermind guys. Thanks for the responses. I found a secondary input on my speakers on the volume control. They both work fine now.

I'm glad you fixed your problem. For future reference:

Why Not Wye?

I've found this unit to be useful when switching a single input (soundcard) to two outputs (speakers vs. headphones). I suspect it will work OK in reverse (single speakers manually switched between two sound cards):

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=PLNAUD...=Search+Froogle

I don't use it for the target app, and don't even use the mic plug/jack, just for headphone vs. speaker switching.

Froogle around for a bit, you can usually get them for < $10 each before shipping.

-brendan

DPDT switch. 50 cents at any Radio Shack. Con: requires soldering.

...also, mounting...and cabling.

-brendan