Windows sound in background.

[kol12]

I can't get any windows sounds to play while Pro Tools is open, be it youtube, music etc. Is there something that needs to configured to allow this?

I'm using asio drivers.

[albee1952]

To get the best help, you need to provide information on your system! At the moment, all we know is you are on a Windows computer What interface are you using? Does the computer have its own sound card and output? As convenient as it seems, running Windows sounds(youtube, WMP, etc) thru the interface can cause problems and/or hardware conflicts. I recommend you have Windows use the onboard sound card as its default audio device. You can choose to connect some computer speakers to that(assuming you have some studio monitors connected to the interface for recording/mixing). If you just gotta have everything come thru the same speakers, a monitor/source selector is a great solution, but a "budget" solution would be to feed the outputs of the interface and the sound card to a small stereo mixer(Behringer, Alto, etc). All it takes is some cables and a mixer with at least 2 stereo input channels(Behringer covers this for about $50)

[kol12]

System specs:

Asus Z97-A Mobo
Intel i5 4690K oc'd at 4.284 GHz 1.215v,
Corsair H80i Gt cooler,
Corsair Dominator Platinum 2400 Mhz 8gb
Seasonic X-660KM PSU
EVGA GTX 970 oc'd to 1450Mhz core clock, 3800Mhz memory (for some games)
Corsair Obsidian 450D case
Win 8.1

I'm using onboard audio (Realtek) and headphones. I'm using the ASIO4ALL as an interface.

I've googled and found out that ASIO4ALL has exclusive access to the soundcard there by disabling other audio apps. It continues to say that to fix this issue you would require a proper audio interface.

Can anyone explain how a interface makes multiple audio sources available?

[kol12]

I decided to uninstall ASIO4ALL for testing purposes and use the realtek driver as the output for Pro Tools. Unfortunately I'm faced with the same problem with not being able to playback windows sounds at the same time as running Pro Tools. Rather frustrating as I'm wanting to go through a Pro Tools video tutorial..

I came across this link, maybe it could be the work around?
http://odeus-audio.com.au/Odeus/AsioLink

[The Weed]

I would highly recommend getting a separate interface with proper ASIO drivers and dedicating that to Pro Tools only and using your onboard sound card as the default for Windows sounds/audio.

On Windows and with PT 11 and up, you will have issues if you try to use the same interface for both PT and Windows sounds/audio.

Cheers,