Headphone problems

The problem is quite simple: all of a sudden the software volume doesn't go loud enough when I'm using headphones. It's like 100 has been set at 70, all of a sudden. That I can't ruin my hearing listen at a volume that lets me fully enjoy what I'm hearing anymore is quite irritating, so I wonder if there's any way to set things back to normal again (I've had this happen before, but then it's only been a matter of rebooting without the headphones plugged in while not having the volume set to maximum or some such thing, but this seems to be more permanent). So, what can I do?

Übereil

Are you using PC for sound?

If so, you can check individual channel volumes by double clicking the sound icon on the task bar - or somewhere in the control panel. I've had this issue on occasion, where games or some application sets the "wave" channel or the channel for sound played by the application lower than master volume. Winamp used to do this all the time for me.

It could be any number of things, but that's one thing you can try.

What do you mean by individual channels? All I get when I double click the sound icon is one bar - the headphone bar, which is at maximum.

Übereil

Ubereil said:

What do you mean by individual channels? All I get when I double click the sound icon is one bar - the headphone bar, which is at maximum.

Übereil

Click to expand...

Have you gone into "Mixer" to see all channels?

DArtagnan said:

Have you gone into "Mixer" to see all channels?

Click to expand...

That wasn't terribly exiting. You could see the volume for the different programs doing sound at the moment.

But I found the problem. I'd accidentally turned down the analog switch on my headphones (I'd forgotten they have one of those). Once I turned them back up to max the volume (unsuprizingly) went back to normal.

Übereil