Can't change output device for Voice

I've got 2 sound cards in the system, one i use for my surround sound setup and one i prefer to use for voice, as it's wired through a little amplifier to my headphones. Regardless of everything i've tried, i select it as the output device, and the voice continues to be played through my 'default' soundcard, which is my surround sound system.

I'm running Vista 64-bit, i've tried removing exclusive mode for the sound cards, nothing seems to work, SL seems to be stuck with the default, regardless of selection.

And on a side note, Ventrillo, Team Speak, etc, etc all work fine with selection so i'm curious if there's some setting i'm missing with SL?

It sounds like you know what you're doing, so I'm going to assume you've already tried this. But just in case, here's how it's supposed to work:

1. Click Edit -> Preferences -> Voice Chat

2. On the Voice Chat tab, click the button for Device Settings.

3. In the Device Settings dialog, you'll see pulldown menus for input and output devices. You should see all OS-enabled audio devices listed under both. Choose your desired device(s) and port(s), and you should be good to go.


Also, just so you know, Vista can be a little tricky with audio. MS's boneheaded attempts at anti-piracy measures have hidden some important features. Some of your sound card settings may be obstructed from view, and/or disabled, as a result. Here's what USUALLY works to restore the hidden features:

1. Open your OS Sound panel. You can do this from Control Panel, or by right-clicking on the speaker tray icon (if present) in your system tray at the right of your taskbar.

2. On the Recording tab, right-click, and then turn on Show Disabled Devices and Show Hidden Devices.

3. Repeat step 2 on the Playback tab, if necessary.

You should now have full access to all audio devices in your PC. But "should" is a funny word. Some device manufacturers have repeated the feature-crippling in their drivers (Creative is one of the worst offenders), rendering their drivers all but useless for anything but the most basic of audio needs. If your drivers are neutered, you'll need to do a little more work.

I learned all this the hard way, myself, after struggling for a couple weeks to get my recording equipment and software to work properly with Vista. Here's the best solution I found, to re-enable everything, the way it's meant to be:

1. Go to your soundcard manufacturer's website, and download the latest 64-bit XP driver for your card(s). Yes, I said XP.

2. Once you've downloaded the driver installer, right-click on it, and set it to run in compatibility mode for XP SP2.

3. Run the installer, and then reboot your machine.

Full functionality of your audio devices will now be restored.

Pretty silly, huh? But hey, it works.

Anyway, I'm not sure if any of the above will help you or not with your particular problem, since as you said, it's seems more of an SL problem than an OS or driver problem. But hopefully you'll find the information useful.

Oh, and one more thing. If either of the sound cards is an X-Fi, be grateful the other one works at all. X-Fi's have a habit of trying to hoard all audio for themselves. It's next to impossible to get a second card to function properly with an X-Fi onboard.

as another who is doing exactly as your trying, I can say.... it won't work.
I'm not sure what SLvoice is doing but it will not and does not use the dropdown tab at all.
Your voice setting are entirely determained by windows and windows alone.

going into sound settings, and setting your headset as 'default windows device' will let SL use it for voice, tho regular SL sounds will also go there. You can turn it back to your regular sound card after SL is started, but if you TP it'll go right back to using your regular card instead of the headset.

My sound setup is an XFI xtreme gamer (rubbish on it not working with other sound cards, I have 3 in my system and all 3 work as they should) for regular speakers, onboard optical out for tv/movies, and logitech USB headset for voice .... SL is the only program that screws with things and makes me adjust the windows default stuff.