This is rather annoying for me as well.  But, I've made do.  I open Chrome when default sound is on my speakers.  Then I change default device to usb headset and launch everything else I do lol.  That way, when I game, I have my headset on.  When I take a break and watch some t.v. show on my computer, it's still going through my speakers without me having to switch devices

Anyway... I still wouldn't mind a lazy alternative beyond what I've done, if anyone else has found an easier / lazier solution haha

I keep my stereo receiver beside my monitor. PC audio out is plugged into the CD port. Headphones and speakers are connected to the receiver. This way there is only 1 big volume nob and not 20 different volumes for everything on the comp. Headphones are always on and speakers are optional with the A or B speaker switches.

I know this will not work with USB headphones but it works great for me.

been wondering of a good SOFTWARE way to do this as well... 

I wouldn't mind that myself, but apart from my headphone being usb at the moment, even when I had regular jack headphones, mine had a mic on it so I could not connect it directly to the speakers because they were too far away from the mic plug in on the computer.

Output to more than one audio device simultaneously

looks like you are sool for now

Good old regular headphones and speakers from the same jack.

You can get an extension mic cable male/female for a few bucks

I actually have one of those but as I said my current headphones are USB and don't plan on changing them any time soon. The problem with this is having to constantly connect and disconnect one of the 2 devices every time I want to switch. It's easier just to do it thru the menu in my image. And this would also require having both devices connected to the same side of the computer, either thru the back or thru the front. the back is too far for my headphones and the front would have more wires hanging around that I would like. A somewhat simple solution but not practical for me.

I know this as well but the fact that I would have another cable going across my desk would be even more clutter. This would simply make my cable management that much more difficult, not to mention I tend to take the headphones with me when I travel for my laptop so having to reach 2 plugs on different sides of the computer is just even more of a hassle.

Thanks for the ideas though. I would still rather have a software solution to just switch back and forth if there is one.

ya... hardware solutions are great sometimes.. and I used them, until my other headset broke and I got a USB one.  Worked great, had audio to my t.v. through the back, a mic jack always plugged in the front, and when I wanted all sound through my headphones I plugged that in the jack right next to the mic in the front, and it would auto send everything there, and then I would unplug it and it would all go out through the back.

Again, we want a SOFTWARE resolution to this problem

The difficulty with USB headphones is that they generally use their own built in sound card to drive them.The difficulty lies in that the sound is being generated ON the headphones. The headphones may have the option to be driven though your normal sound card driver - that would probably be the only real possibility short of getting a different set of headphones or something over my head entirely.

I did not try it myself, but after a short Google search I found this page with looks like some helpful tips and software. Look to the third reply down.

damnit.. autohotkey doesn't run on my comp for some reason : / It used to, and I used it to bot in WoW and I used an awesome vent control script (like hover over someone's name and hold a button to spam page them.. was fantastic for harassers).  Buut everytime I try to start it it crashes, even after an uninstall / reinstall.  Maybe I'll look into fixing it so I can use it again  

Anyway, thx for the link, I would assume it will work for the other ppl