Audio is way too loud after rebuilding my PC

[AgentL3r]

I stripped and rebuilt my PC about a week ago along with wiping my SSD and HDD along with a fresh install of Windows 10.

 

Now, I noticed that my audio is incredibly loud. Even on "8", my audio is super loud, whereas before I rebuilt it was comfortable.

 

I'm using Sennheiser 598SRs with the adaptor to 3.5mm audio, and an Asus H170 Pro Gaming motherboard. Audio drivers are up to date.

 

What's gone wrong here?

[Enderman]

8 what??

8 percent?

8/10?

Explain.

[AgentL3r]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

8 what??

8 percent?

8/10?

Explain.

8/100 on the Windows volume setting. Sorry, should have been clearer.

[iBabySlapper]

If your motherboard audio has auto impedence sensing, it might of bugged out and started thinking your cans are 300 ohm or something. On some mobos you can change this manually, can you have a look?

[Enderman]

9 minutes ago, AgentL3r said:

8/100 on the Windows volume setting. Sorry, should have been clearer.

Are you using the default windows audio drivers or did you install something else?

[AgentL3r]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Are you using the default windows audio drivers or did you install something else?

Realtek drivers.

 

5 minutes ago, ibabyslapper said:

If your motherboard audio has auto impedence sensing, it might of bugged out and started thinking your cans are 300 ohm or something. On some mobos you can change this manually, can you have a look?

Nope, doesn't seem to have auto impedence.

[Enderman]

40 minutes ago, AgentL3r said:

Realtek drivers.

But did you install them manually or are the ones that windows update installed automatically?

[AgentL3r]

11 hours ago, Enderman said:

But did you install them manually or are the ones that windows update installed automatically?

Manually.

[an actual squirrel]

Usually, people have the opposite problem. But I will add that it is always good practice to get the drivers directly from asus, since they are in charge of the implementation. People should really not be using generic realtek drivers.

[AgentL3r]

1 hour ago, an actual squirrel said:

Usually, people have the opposite problem. But I will add that it is always good practice to get the drivers directly from asus, since they are in charge of the implementation. People should really not be using generic realtek drivers.

I did get them from the Asus website.

[Enderman]

8 hours ago, AgentL3r said:

Manually.

7 hours ago, an actual squirrel said:

Usually, people have the opposite problem. But I will add that it is always good practice to get the drivers directly from asus, since they are in charge of the implementation. People should really not be using generic realtek drivers.

 

Most of the audio issues I've seen people have are because they installed stuff from the motherboard website.

If the default windows drivers are working fine, DO NOT manually install any drivers.

[an actual squirrel]

2 hours ago, Enderman said:

 

Most of the audio issues I've seen people have are because they installed stuff from the motherboard website.

If the default windows drivers are working fine, DO NOT manually install any drivers.

No, because usually the motherboard company does a lot of custom work on the audio solution, and the generic driver is meant for a reference design. So for example, the reason OP's audio suddenly got a lot louder is probably because he installed the custom driver and that enabled the headphone amp circuit that asus had put on the board that wasn't supported by the windows driver.

[Enderman]

7 minutes ago, an actual squirrel said:

No, because usually the motherboard company does a lot of custom work on the audio solution, and the generic driver is meant for a reference design. So for example, the reason OP's audio suddenly got a lot louder is probably because he installed the custom driver and that enabled the headphone amp circuit that asus had put on the board that wasn't supported by the windows driver.

No, if the audio was fine then the volume control on windows would be working properly and not insanely loud at 8%.

Windows update installs the audio drivers designed for the specific dac on the motherboard, but the drivers are newer or validated to work with the specific windows build and updates.

The drivers on the motherboard website are usually put there when the motherboard is released and not updated since.

 

As I said, most people have their audio issues AFTER manually installing stuff from the motherboard website overtop of the stuff windows already installed.

The only time when you should be going to the motehrboard website to download stuff is if something is outright not working, like no LAN or no audio.

[an actual squirrel]

12 hours ago, Enderman said:

No, if the audio was fine then the volume control on windows would be working properly and not insanely loud at 8%.

Windows update installs the audio drivers designed for the specific dac on the motherboard, but the drivers are newer or validated to work with the specific windows build and updates.

The drivers on the motherboard website are usually put there when the motherboard is released and not updated since.

 

As I said, most people have their audio issues AFTER manually installing stuff from the motherboard website overtop of the stuff windows already installed.

The only time when you should be going to the motehrboard website to download stuff is if something is outright not working, like no LAN or no audio.

The volume control likely works, but the amount of attenuation needed is greater because with the headphone amp, he has more power output. In this specific case, that may be annoying, but it does give him the ability to use other headphones like the dt880 pro or hd 6xx without fear of too low a volume.

 

The point of installing drivers is to make the hardware function as intended. You shouldn't install the wrong drivers just for the sake of having newer drivers.

[Enderman]

10 hours ago, an actual squirrel said:

The volume control likely works, but the amount of attenuation needed is greater because with the headphone amp, he has more power output. In this specific case, that may be annoying, but it does give him the ability to use other headphones like the dt880 pro or hd 6xx without fear of too low a volume.

 

The point of installing drivers is to make the hardware function as intended. You shouldn't install the wrong drivers just for the sake of having newer drivers.

What I'm saying is that he should not be installing ANY drivers.

Windows installs the ones that almost always work.

Maybe you haven't seen the hundreds of posts I have about people having audio issues because they installed the ones from the motherboard website over top.

 

As it said, unless ther eis a problem with the default windows drivers, DO NOT install anything else.

[darthyimmy]

my guess is that the speaker configuration could be wrong in the realtek control panel, it might be thinking it's a 5.1 output versus headphones