ALC1150 Headphone Amp

[PowerPie5000]

Does anyone here know if the headphone amp is automatically enabled when using the onboard Realtek ALC1150 audio? My motherboard is the Asrock Z97 Extreme4 with "Purity Sound 2" audio which includes a headphone amp. The sound is great, but my headphones are noticeably quieter when compared to my old Asus Xonar DG card. My headphones were quite loud at around 30-40% volume with the Asus card, but I need to bump the volume up to a about 60-70% to get the same level of volume with the onboard audio headphone amp.

Who else uses an integrated motherboard headphone amp?

[MrRockliffe]

Download the audio drivers from ASRock website, could be the issue.

[PowerPie5000]

Download the audio drivers from ASRock website, could be the issue.

I could have sworn I downloaded and installed the drivers from their site not long ago, But it seems my current audio drivers are dated July 2013! Maybe it's using generic Windows 8.1 Realtek drivers at the moment . I'll download the driver again and make sure I install it this time (I did them all at once after I had installed Win 8.1 so probably missed it by accident).

[PowerPie5000]

Turns out I did actually download and install the Asrock drivers in the first place. They're dated 2014 on their website, but they're actually old 2013 drivers from over a year ago! Maybe i'll try directly downloading from Realtek instead.

[Goobley]

It may just have a lower voltage swing than your old asus DG. If the Op amp in the DG is closer to / is rail to rail and the ALC1150 isn't that could be where it comes from. If it goes loud enough, then don't worry.

From looking at the realtek site it looks to me like the headphone amplifier is always engaged on ports D/E/F from the chip. So there's probably nothing you can do. It also specified the ALC as running it's analog side at 5V, whereas PCI (the DG is PCI IIRC) carries 12V (again IIRC), this would give the DG's output stage significantly larger swing.

When it comes down to it, if it goes loud enough then it's fine. Also, for maximum sound quality, the Windows sound control is digital and so having it down too low can actually lose significant content from the sound as lesser bits get truncated.

[PowerPie5000]

It may just have a lower voltage swing than your old asus DG. If the Op amp in the DG is closer to / is rail to rail and the ALC1150 isn't that could be where it comes from. If it goes loud enough, then don't worry.

From looking at the realtek site it looks to me like the headphone amplifier is always engaged on ports D/E/F from the chip. So there's probably nothing you can do. It also specified the ALC as running it's analog side at 5V, whereas PCI (the DG is PCI IIRC) carries 12V (again IIRC), this would give the DG's output stage significantly larger swing.

When it comes down to it, if it goes loud enough then it's fine. Also, for maximum sound quality, the Windows sound control is digital and so having it down too low can actually lose significant content from the sound as lesser bits get truncated.

I'm getting used to it and it's not really that quiet, I just need to ramp up the volume slider a bit higher than i'm used to. The sound quality is actually pretty good coming from the ALC1150 chip (Asrock call it Purity Sound 2). It's decent enough that I don't feel the need to get another dedicated sound card. Definitely miles better than the ALC892 chip in my older i7 system (which is still using the Xonar DG card).