Item — HN Reader

This just shows my ignorance with regard to this topic, but is the speaker cutoff from plugging in headphones always a hardware switch? I.e., can software override it and direct sound to the speakers even if one has headphones plugged in?

Of course, if one were playing music or something, it would be obvious that the switch had been circumvented.

6 comments

I have seen this behavior both controlled by an extra mechanical pin in the audio jack and also by a feature on the audio chip which was ultimately controlled in software. So it's hard to tell whether that would work.

Also consider that if you played the sound at maximum volume it might actually be audible some distance away from the headphones.

No, on my current mac there is a delay of one or two seconds between when the plug is fully inserted and the speakers/headphones start working. Thus, i presume it is some silicon or software.

On one computer I owned, it was entirely in the audio driver -- so when I switched to Linux, I was surprised to see that the headphones and speaker had independently controls for volume levels. (The latter was labelled "Mono Out", and the behaviour where plugging in headphones cut off speakers didn't happen on that Linux install.)

No, it's not always hardware, things are shifting over to software switching over the past few years. One way to bypass this completely is to short your microphone input, or make a feedback loop between mic/headphone jack (this hurts just thinking about it, but should work.)

I honestly have no idea. My response was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but whoever downvoted me seems to have missed my subtle sense of humor.

They may have gotten it, but thought it was not funny.

http://i.imgur.com/ip6zwes.png

On Linux you can choose different behavior; so it's apparently software. At least, on machines I've worked on. Depending on that dropdown, I can plug in headphones and the built-in speakers will continue to output.