Sound Card Distortion

[BlackThorn]

I have noticed that my creative sound blaster x-fi titanium fatal1ty has recently started to distort on low end bass sounds. If I set the volume on my PC to max it distorts on my speakers even with the amp turned down very very low. Is this normal? I have never had anything like this happen before and I never really noticed it until I started using my PC volume for the master volume, so I don't have to keep getting up all the time to turn the volume on the amp down.

[eshbop]

I've got PC onboard sound > 3.5mm input on a cheap stereo (yeah need an upgrade) and the same happens. I leave the PC volume to ~70%, over that you can hear bass distortion. So it's not hardware specific.Not sure what causes it though.

[Guest]

I set the volume on my PC to max it distorts on my speakers even with the amp turned down very very low..

And that would be why. You're sending a signal that is already clipping into an amp which has nothing to work with other than a horribly clipped signal.

[BlackThorn]

I just find it strange because my friends rubbish laptop can be on 100% and it don't distort. Must be that my sound card is more powerful and clips unlike the lower grade one.

[Guest]

It's solely dependant on the source if a system will clip at 100%.

[BlackThorn]

They were high quality rips, I even notice it on FLAC files at 100% even if my amp is very low.

[RavenXE]

Perhaps you're audio gain is set to high elsewhere in the audio drivers, witch can clip the audio before it goes in the Windows Sound Mixer ?

Personally I set the windows audio master volume @ 85% to reduce clipping on poorly recorded sound sources

[t0wer]

do creative sound cards just handle clipping poorly?

[RavenXE]

do creative sound cards just handle clipping poorly?

My last creative sound card was a Audigy 2 ZS, the sound quality of that card was great at the time

[BlackThorn]

The sound quality is stunning compared to on board and quite a large amount of sound cards. Also, I have a feeling I just found out what it is and I feel like such a dumb ass now. Basically I read RavenXE's comment, opened up the console for the sound card and went to check if it even had a gain. (which it don't) When I then, I remembered when I was having a really late night battlefield session when Aftermath came out, I changed the setting from 2/2:1 speakers to headphones. So I changed it back, boom fixed. It's crazy how bad the clipping is and yes it even clips in my krk 8400 monitor headphones plugged directly into the sound card, which is also strange being as it is a mode for headphones it may just be protecting them from damage. It only distorted the low ends and got worse with how complex the other levels were. Anyway, lesson learnt, don't use the headphone setting on the creative cards. Feel really stupid now lol.