Accidental misunderstandings are fun. They are tough to figure out, but, when over, can be a great source of fun.
I was wondering why all of a sudden Olga started giving me those looks recently. The looks like I am an ignorant bastard who doesn’t care about anyone else. Sometimes she was also complaining from the loud sounds that come out of my notebook. Impossible I thought – I am wearing the headphones for a reason. And there is no way someone can hear the sound from the headphones from another room. She’s just making it all up to make me go to bed in time.
Today I realised though that she was right. And the problem wasn’t in the headphones. The problem was with the configuration of the soundcard. Whenever I plugged the headphones in, I was sure that the sound from the speakers was gone. But it wasn’t! And, of course, wearing the headphones which played the same sounds that were coming out of the speakers, I couldn’t notice the problem. It was only by accident that I took off the headphones when the sounds were still coming out and I realized what the problem was. It took me five seconds to fix it.
For those of you who need a fix for this problem – it’s in the volume controls. Sometimes, the volume settings can be differnt for headphones and for speakers. And sometimes you can have a setting for the soundcard to automatically switch off the speakers when the headphones are plugged in. In kmix this setting is in the Switches bar and it is called Headphone jack sense. It should be on.