I did my own homecooked little thing:

First I set up two mute groups where group 1 means mute the headphones and group 2 means mute the monitors. This means that pressing both mute group 1 and 2 will effectively toggle the output between monitors and headphones.

Next I set up F7 and F8 in the key commands setup of totalmix to toggle mute group 1 and 2.

Now I wrote an Applescript that will, when run, check if totalmix is open, and if it is switch to totalmix sending F7 and F8, then returning back to the previously focused application.

Finally we need a way to run this from a keyboard shortcut. I already use BetterTouchTool so this was the logical choice but any app doing keybaord shortcuts -> launch programs will do. I set the F5 key to run the script as this key is unused and readily available without any modifier keys.

SOO, now when I click F5 on my mac, I toggle between monitors and headphones. This might come handy for others wanting the same on mac. On PC you could probably do the same using something else to substitute the applescript. Autoit comes to mind.

Here is the script:

delay 0.1
tell application "System Events" to set totalmixIsRunning to (name of processes) contains "TotalmixFX"
if totalmixIsRunning then
    tell application "Totalmix" to activate
    delay 0.1
    tell application "System Events" to key code 98
    tell application "System Events" to key code 100
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke tab using {command down}
end if

HOWEVER, I certainly wish someone will chime in here telling me an easier way to do this.

> and I can no longer have a fx return setting on the headphones unique to the one for main out.

I don't understand why there should be different reverb/echo amounts on phone and speakers if you just want to use one or the other (which is perfectly done by the Speaker B functionality).

No, I was right, signal chains are shared entirely when using the B speaker functionallity. I can see the use for this, but it's also a huge limitation and there should be a switch to override this behavior. In fact it's weird how this simple thing I want to do isn't thought of by anyone as it seems, it must be used all the time?

- When I set the headphones as 2nd main there is no longer separate mixes as far as I can see. Clicking headphones, then monitors reveals that the mixes are linked. If I move a fader in one of them, then switching to the other the change persists.

- The reason is that I switch alot between recording using headphones w monitoring, then switching to monitors to look closer at the recording. This all goes on in the same room which calls for the need to mute the monitors while recording. I wouldn't necessarily need to mute the headphones when listening through the monitors but I use open headphones and they actually leak enough sound to be disturbing when listening with the monitors and here comes the need to switch back and forth in an easy way. I don't have the best of accoustics in the room either meaning I often switch between monitors and headphones to check the mix.

It's not exactly a huge need, but I found myself doing this manually time after time and felt the need to make that easier. I probably do things in a weird way since it's not a standard feature

THanks, I hadn't thought about the cue feature, I always mute the microphones instead but that's two clicks. This was however not the reason that I didn't stay with the headphones. The thing is that I have a set of closed back monitoring headphones that aren't very good for mixing so I'd have to switch headphone anyway and then I usually rather go to monitors. It's probably an unordinary thing to do. On the other hand there are more uses for this for small scale people. If a one button switch was possible you could also connect a second set of monitors to the headphones output, perhaps a set of typical computer speakers, and easily check your mix on both. As always there are better ways for this if you get something to hook up to the ADAT but small scale musicians always try to cream out as much as possible from what they did put their money on.

Either way, including this as a possibility (even if it may be a small number of people wanting this) it'd still be very welcome. For now I'll run my script to do it.

Definitely, and I can report from using my user solution with the applescript that I am using this ALL THE TIME, it's really helping alot!

I must admit I work in a very similar way so this type of feature would be very useful.

I agree,
also using workarounds here with mute groups etc., as the Speaker B option does not work when using speaker/room/headphone correction plugins in the monitoring paths, as those result in different software playback channels and switching to speaker b is locked to the same mix as 'a'.

+1!