How do I specify the playback device for Winamp or default device in Windows 7?

Question

My Windows 7 computer is sometimes used for playing notifications. These notifications are scheduled using the standard system scheduler ("Schedule tasks" command in the control panel). A typical task looks like the following:

Name: Get up  
Program/script: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Winamp\winamp.exe"  
Arguments: /CONFIG="D:\Fun\music\morning2010.winamp.ini" "D:\Fun\music\morning2010.m3u"  
"Wake the computer to run this task": on

I want all such notifications to be played by the speakers ("Speakers\Realtek High Definition Audio" in the "Sounds" window from the Control Panel) rather than by any other device. However now they are played by the default playback device of the system, which changes from time to time. In order to fix that I need to do one of the following:

1. Change a playback device from the command line. (then I can run it before calling the Winamp).
2. Specify a playback device in the command line for Winamp.
3. Specify a playback device in "Winamp.ini".
4. Forget about Winamp, choose another player, for which this task is simple.
5. There might be some ideas I have missed.

Unfortunately I haven't found, how to do any of that. For 3. I have found the following lines in my winamp.ini, which might be relevant to the question, but I haven't found any documentation:

[out_ds]
cfg_dev2=0000000000000000000000000000000000
[out_wave]
cfg_dev=0

I'm afraid that some scripting like AutoIt wouldn't help difference since tasks are often running just after waking up the computer, and therefore they have no window appearing on the screen (actually, music is playing while Windows shows the login screen), but I've never used it and my thoughts on that might be a mistake.

I hope that my task is simple and I have missed some simple solutions you might know.

Answer 1

In Winamp (my version is 5.551) you can choose the sound device as follows:

Options -> Preferences -> Plug-ins -> Output -> choose "Nullsoft DirectSound Output [out_ds.dll]", then "configure" below.

Then you can choose the device you wish to use for playback.

Please note that restarting Winamp is required to make this active.