If you have an audio card (or some people call it sound card) that supports multiple outputs and actually using it for different purposes such as playing games, watching movies & listening to music, you’ll have to go through the hassle of changing the audio output in Windows Vista Control Panel.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you have a headphone and speakers. In order to change the audio output, you’ll have to close the program that is currently outputing the audio and right click on the speaker icon, choose Playback Devices, right-click on the playback device that you want and select Set as Default. Then click OK to close the sound configuration window and relaunch the program and play the audio. That will make it change from one output to the other, but it is troublesome and involves many steps.

Here are a few easy to use tools that can help you easily switch the default playback device.

1. System Tray Audio Device Switcher (STADS)
system tray audio device switcher
- STADS is a program compiled on 07/12/06 that allows you to easily switch between audio devices without going into the control panel. This program was created because the author have an audio card that supports multiple outputs and he got tired of going into the Control Panel every time he wanted to simply switch Winamp to use different speakers.

[ Download STADS ]

2. Quick Sound Switch
Quick Sound Switch
- Quick Sound Switch is a small System Tray tool compiled on 02/11/2007, which allows you to switch the default sound device with only one click. It is useful for PCs with more than one soundcard (or for example soundcard + usb headset..)!

[ Download Quick Sound Switch ]

3. Vista Audio Changer
Vista Audio Changer
- Since the redesigning of the audio structure in Windows Vista, there is no available API for changing the default audio output device. Vista Audio Changer mimics the user’s actions: systematically opening the Control Panel dialog, selecting the appropriate sound card and finally setting it as the default device. The entire process should take less than a second. It is the ideal tool for people who use different outputs or sound cards for playing games, watching movies & listening to music. The interface is extremely simple. It only takes two clicks to change the default device.

[ Download Vista Audio Changer ]

Quick Sound Switch is the best among the three applications because it has a lot of features such as creating shortcut to easily change the default audio, hotkeys and a built-in mixer. Unfortunately STADS and Quick Sound Switch works in Windows XP but not in Vista. Searching in Google reveals a fair number of claims that default audio switching cannot be done because the Vista Audio API is not released to public. Thank God that blade0rz created Vista Audio Changer that works in Windows Vista. I can definitely live without those extra features that is included in Quick Sound Switch but it’d be nice to have all that.

[tags]vista, default, audio, changer, sound[/tags]