Solved! Sound Card Not Loud Enough?

[Rome101]

Hi guys,
My sound card is an Asus STRIX Soar, and I like it, but when I'm on my speakers the sound is noticeably quieter than on my headphones. When I used my on-board sound card the overall volume was a lot higher. It's not like silence-low, it can get pretty decent, but I have to turn the volume knob on my speakers all the way up for that.
Why is that?

I recently found that if I turn up all EQ channels then the volume is absolutely louder and to my liking in terms of loudness, but having to move each slider independently means I can't test for any changes is sound quality.

So I guess what I'm asking is: does identically boosting all frequency ranges distorts the sound in any way? Am I getting worse sound because of it?
Also, why is that not affecting the headphones?
Which, by the way, are a HyperX Cloud Revolvers. They are set to Medium Impedence.
And it appears to me that the distance on their volume knob from "pretty quiet" to "headbursting loud" is really short - is that normal?

I've added a screenshot of my sound settings.
Thank you

 

[Ralston18]

Did you click the small speaker icon (probably lower right screen corner) and select Playback devices?

There are a variety of windows and tabs with multiple configuration options.

Take a look and see if one of configurable options needs to be corrected or changed.

 

[americanaudiophile]

Identically boosting all the frequencies on an EQ can cause distortion.
You don't get louder flat frequency response the way it looks on the display, you get huge peaks at the center frequency and troughs in between.

 

[Mouldread]

Hey Rome101,

I'm sorry I didn't read your post into too much details but I just happened to be reading a review of the exact sound card like yours, and I saw something about volume in it.

Here you can read the whole article/review http/me.ign.com/en/asus-strix-raid-dlx-71-gaming-sound-card/120902/review/asus-strix-raid-dlx-71-gaming-sound-card-review

But the interestnig part of the article is this:

..."- Headphones amplifier: The Strix can drive headphones upto 600ohm, however the setting has to be manually selected to get the desired amplification. The first time I plugged my headphones in, I found the volume to be a bit lacking and I was extremely disappointed with the performance. Only by chance I found out that you can change the impedance (ohm) level by right clicking the headphones icon on the software, and selecting the level of amplification you want (low, medium, high). Asus certainly needs to highlight this setting in case users are turned away by the low volume output."....

It might help you with your problem, and I'm sorry if it doesn't.

Regards

 

[Rome101]

Hi Mouldread, thanks for picking up that piece. I was actually aware of this feature because I also found it completely by accident.

However my issue is with the speakers themselves, not the headphones. The headphones I actually had set on Medium Impedence because High was a bit too much (though my shot ears don't discern much changes in volume at really high decibels, I think I have a threshold or something).

So thank you, but this solution is for headphones and not speakers.

Hey Rome101,

I'm sorry I didn't read your post into too much details but I just happened to be reading a review of the exact sound card like yours, and I saw something about volume in it.

Here you can read the whole article/review http/me.ign.com/en/asus-strix-raid-dlx-71-gaming-sound-card/120902/review/asus-strix-raid-dlx-71-gaming-sound-card-review

But the interestnig part of the article is this:

..."- Headphones amplifier: The Strix can drive headphones upto 600ohm, however the setting has to be manually selected to get the desired amplification. The first time I plugged my headphones in, I found the volume to be a bit lacking and I was extremely disappointed with the performance. Only by chance I found out that you can change the impedance (ohm) level by right clicking the headphones icon on the software, and selecting the level of amplification you want (low, medium, high). Asus certainly needs to highlight this setting in case users are turned away by the low volume output."....

It might help you with your problem, and I'm sorry if it doesn't.

Regards