new motherboard, headphone volume too low

[gooberguy]

hi all

i just bought the GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P, along with a new everything else, and the onboard sound seems a little wacky. when i plug my headphones in, i can barely hear anything! my speakers i noticed are lower in volume, but since they get power i can easily amp up the volume, in my headphones case, i can not. any ideas?

[redwudz]

Maybe a mismatch in headphone impedance? Headphones (And un-amplified speakers) are rated by impedance, measured in ohms. Speakers are usually low impedance 4 - 8 ohms. Headphones can be all over the place in impedance. Low impedance headphones, the most common, range from 75 ohms to about 150. High impedance headphones are usually about 600 ohm and require more driving power than the low impedance ones. These are more commonly used with a mixer board. http://www.practical-home-theater-guide.com/headphones.html

And I assume you have already adjusted the output power in the audio settings. You might check if there is an updated audio driver available, sometimes that helps. Newer motherboards may have more than one audio setup. A couple of my Gigabyte MBs have a Realtek High Definition driver and a audio manager separate from the regular 'Sound' page in 'Control Panel', though both should have about the same affect for volume. The Realtek manager has a lot more settings.

If no help there, many powered speakers have a headphone jack and you may be able to get higher audio levels off that.

[gooberguy]

thanks for the quick response.

i have the latest drivers, have checked both the settings in the realtek sound settings as well as windows, and my speakers do not power up the headphones when plugged in.

[johns0]

Buying a sound card will fix the problem since onboard sound is terrible for anything but simple audio.

[zoobie]

make sure your HD realtek audio manager is working and set properly
try the analog setup