can you only use one part of a soundcard?

[realredpanda]

i'm running onboard ac97 which i'm happy with for my sound choice, the only problem is that i want to use midi but there is no midi port with my onboard sound. i have an older aopen soundcard which has the midi bit i want, but i really don't want to install all the drivers for it just to use the one aspect.

is there a way around this? some way to make windows just install the midi port and ignore the sound outs?

 

[will889]

Hmm, maybe by canceling everything but the MIDI port in the device manager, not sure. You may just have to use that older soundcard by itself, if it's the Aopen CMI 8738 card its about equal to ALC883 anyway, save the HD audio version with optical/RCA out on some of the higher end realtek solutions.

 

[Peter]

There isn't any problem in having multiple sound devices in the same computer. Windows, and sometimes even the individual applications, let you choose which one to output to.

So just add that card for the MIDI port, let it install all its drivers - and then go set Windows audio preference to keep using the onboard.