If you have a couple of sound cards installed on your Windows machine for recording or editing purposes, switching them is an everyday activity. Though Windows provides a clean user interface to do this, it takes a couple of steps, and sometimes it is even buggy, which I did face with my Bluetooth Device. So, it would be best to have a one-click switch option to change the default device or switch default sound device from the command line to the one you want.
Switch Default Sound Device from Command Line in Windows
NirSoft has command line tools with 3 new tools that work on Windows’s Volume or Sound control options. One such tool is nircmd setdefaultsounddevice which, when run from command tools with the argument as device name, the change is instant.
The other two tools are:
- setsubunitvolumedb: This allows volume level in DB. It doesn’t support percentages till now, so you might get confused.
- mutesubunitvolume: This allows you to mute any sound device like Mic, Line In, etc.
How to use the nircmd change audio device tool
- Download the NirCMD software (cmd change audio device) from here
- Click to install in Windows Directory.
- Now, Let’s say you have two playback devices, “Device One” and “Device Two”
- Right-click on the desktop and click on New > Shortcut. Type in C:\Windows\nircmdc.exe. Assuming your Windows Directory is in C :
- Once the shortcut change audio device is ready, right-click and select Properties > Target.
- Here, you must add a command option to help you switch.
- For Device One, it should be
C:\Windows\nircmd.exe setdefaultsounddevice "deviceone"
- Change “deviceone” to “devicetwo”
- You can pin them to the taskbar and even think of giving them an icon by extracting some from the shell to change default switch.
You can also type in the same thing over the command line, which will work. The idea is to create a shortcut so you can switch faster, or else it will be cumbersome again to change the default communication device. Or you can setup windows hotkey change audio device to do it right from the desktop.
Video demo: How to change default playback devices
How to change default audio device through the command line in Windows – Using Windows PowerShell
Although there are plenty of Third-Party applications available for the said task, the below-mentioned steps by way of Windows PowerShell can help the cause:
- Open the Windows PowerShell
Press the Windows+X key together and choose Windows PowerShell from the list of options.
- List of available audio devices
Before switching audio devices, the below-mentioned command can help display the list of the available ones, along with their Properties.
Get-AudioDevice -list
- Switch and set default audio device
The command below can be entered in the Windows Powershell to switch to a different audio device and set the same as the default.
Set-AudioDevice -Playback -Default -DeviceName "DeviceName"
In the above command, the Playback option signifies that the user is configuring a playback audio output device. The Default option ensures that the said device is set as the default audio device in the system.
“DeviceName” in the present context needs to be replaced with the name of the audio device, as shown in the list as appearing in the list of audio devices in (1). For example, if “Headphones” are to be set as the default, the same can be achieved through the following command line instruction in the Powershell
Set-AudioDevice -Playback -Default -DeviceName "Headphones"
I hope the post was easy to understand and that you could switch between multiple devices. The tool has many other features, including nircmd mute microphone, support for line in device and more.
Awesome tool bro… I was searching this kind of shortcut switch for a long time,….You Rock!!!
Thanks a lot buddy.. saved me a lot of time and fights with dad.. 😀
I want to change default recording device. Also, enable stereo mix if disabled first. Can you please let me know any tool for achieiving this ?