PT Audio Won't Play Through Headphones

[TheDimSide]

Hi, I'm new to this forum and getting back into Pro Tools after several years, so I'm pretty rusty with all of this. It's also new for me using it on Windows (but my MacBook finally died for good).

I've seen this problem posted elsewhere, but none of the answers have been helpful so far. I was using Pro Tools 10 (I own it for both Mac and Windows) on Windows 10, and I know they weren't compatible, but it was running as Windows 8 for compatibility and mainly seemed to be working aside from audio issues. At first, if I tried playing audio outside of Pro Tools, then all the audio on my computer stopped working. Now, the audio plays fine through the speakers, but PT isn't recognizing my headphones anymore. The headphones are recognized for audio outside of Pro Tools though. No settings were even changed, so I'm not sure what happened.

I thought maybe it just wasn't meant to be because of the incompatibility of the program, so I downloaded a trial of Pro Tools Ultimate, but the same problem is still happening.

I'm using ASIO4ALL, which is my first time using it for the hardware. In the Playback Engine, it's the only "option," as in, there aren't any options. It's just printed on there without any sort of drop down menu or anything, and I'm not sure if that's normal or not. And the audio driver for Windows is Realtek High Definition Audio (SST).

I'm using a Surface Book 2, 13-inch, Windows 10, Intel Core i7-8650U CPU @ 1.90GHz 2.11 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 64-bit OS, x64-based processor. Again, I'm really rusty with Pro Tools and all audio editing information, so this is probably a simple fix that I'm just missing. But I'd appreciate any advice on how to deal with this! If I need to provide any more information, just let me know. Thanks!

[BScout]

You should post a screenshot of your ASIO4ALL settings/configuration. That's what tells what the ASIO4ALL actual routing to real hardware is going to be.

[TheDimSide]

How do I find where that's located? I can't seem to find any sort of control panel or program or anything to get information on it. Sorry if it's a dumb question. Again, it's my first time using ASIO4ALL.

[TheDimSide]

Is this the right one? It only has the option for Realtek but no headphone options.

[BScout]

From your previous screenshots, your headphones are coming from the Realtek.

Look what shows up under the wrench.

It really comes down to your computer and not pro tools. Pro tools i sending to your computer and then your computer has to manage to get it out to the headphones. Sometimes that mirrors the stereo 1-2 out. Sometimes headphones are treated as completely separate outputs. From your previous screenshots, it appears your Realtek is showing multiple outputs (which is represented in Asio4All when chosen as the playback engine.) My guess is that one of the other outputs belongs to your headphones. You just have to figure out which.

(I have a laptop with the Realtek chipset that you can choose to either mirror stereo 1-2 to go to the headphones or treat the headphones as completely independent outputs from the built-in speakers.)

[TheDimSide]

Yeah, I was unclear with how that control panel worked. But after clicking the wrench, I saw more detail in the panel, clicked the plus icon by Realtek, and it had a couple output options. I assumed one was for the speakers and one was for the headphones. When I toggled the assumed speakers one off, I got the headphones to work! It's just annoying that I apparently have to do this manually, I didn't have this issue before, so I'm not sure what's causing it. But at least it's a solution!