Inline headphone volume control

[Drakenfeng]

I've got a pair of ATH-A700X connected to a Sound Blaster Xi-Fi Titanium - sounds great. Issue is I have to drop the volume in Windows to 8-12% to keep them from being painfully loud. This leads to problems when I need to tweak the volume of games (particularly during voice chat) because there's such a small range to work with. And sometimes Windows feels like using the speaker volume (40%) instead of the headphone volume when I plug them in, that's always a shocker.

So I was looking around for an inline volume control, except all of the $10 variants I found online have reviews saying they distort the sound horribly. I wanted to see if anyone has experience with a decent quality volume control. I'd imagine a headphone amp wouldn't have any quality issues, but that seems like overkill in this situation.

 

[Warrior]

Headphone amp is Not overkill when the price is sound quality and the health of your ears.

 

[evilsofa]

Fair warning: what "sounds all right to me" isn't audiophile quality - I'm severely but not totally deaf, so there may be distortion that I can't hear.

What I have been using is the Koss VC20 Volume Control for $8 on Amazon. You get what you pay for on this one; it's far from perfect. I got two of them - one for my PC and one for my TV. They both behave the same: they sound all right to me at maximum volume, and at about 75% or less I think they sound all right to me. But between about 75% and 99%, the balance goes all screwy; the left stays the volume it's supposed to be, I think, but the right either gets way too quiet or distorted.

Also, when I hooked it up to the TV's 3.5mm analog audio out, changing the volume on the Koss VC20 screwed with the volume on the TV somehow - turn the VC20 volume down, TV volume goes up. I'm sure that will tell some audiophile what it's doing but I don't know. To fix that, I put a Fiio E6 amp between the Koss VC20 and the TV, and it fixed that problem but not the problem with the balance going screwy.

So why am I still using the VC20 when I have the E6 there? Because I love the analog wheel volume control on the VC20 a lot better than I do the volume control on the E6. I know, this sucks and I would like a better arrangement.

Anyway, look at the Fiio line of amps. While I'm no expert on how good they sound, everyone else seems to say they sound great. I should probably look at some more of their amps now myself to see if they have something more like what I want.

Edit: ooo, the Fiio E12 has a dial on it! But it's spendy. But it does everything I want! Argh.

The E10 and E09K do too but they hook up to USB... would that be better/simpler than my PC's Xonar DG or not?

Note: the Xonar DG is what you can get if you have a spare PCI slot and want nothing but a headphone amp for your PC, but the drivers are complicated, at least to me. I'm using the Uni Xonar community patched drivers for it.

 

[Rinderanzug]

Just use the equalizer in the Creative Console Launcher, there's a slider labeled "Level" all the way over to the right that can turn everything down.

When your speaker and headphone volumes get mixed up, does the creative software switch your speaker setting to headphones like it's supposed to when it senses that jack plugged in and seems to forget the volume setting, or does it just never change from speakers to headphones? If it's just forgetting your volume setting, set your volume in headphone mode, manually switch from headphones to speakers, tweak the volume, and set it back to headphones, and it should remember the volume in each setting after that. I used to get that every now and again before I started doing that with each mode right after each driver install.

If it's just not switching between headphones and speakers like it should be automatically doing, you may just want to turn off the "Automatically enable headphone settings" setting in creative's software and just change it manually each time you switch. Daniel K's drivers may also be worth a shot, he's customized all the little utility programs that come with the drivers, so they might not exhibit that bug for you.

 

[Syphon Filter]

I have a similar issue with my Sound Blaster Z and DT880 250Ohm.

The volume control is fine in Windows, so I can play a music track and the range of control seems sufficient, At 100% it's loud enough, clear and I can turn it right down too.

However, the volume level in games is another matter. It's way too loud, even with the Windows volume at 25% I have to turn game audio down to like 15% to get something that is comfortable to me.

COD:Ghosts in particular is bad, there's something about the grenades/explosions, the sound is horrible, very scratchy/peaky and it's quite painful.

No idea what the issue is. Some have suggested an amp but I'm not convinced and others aren't either.

 

[Drakenfeng]

Just use the equalizer in the Creative Console Launcher, there's a slider labeled "Level" all the way over to the right that can turn everything down.

Seems a little hackish using the equalizer for this but it does solve the issue, thanks!

The times it mostly doesn't realize the headphones are still plugged in are if I put the system into sleep with the headphones still plugged in. When I restore from sleep mode it reverts to thinking only the speakers are plugged in.

Thanks to everyone else who replied as well. I'll look into getting one of those Koss volume controls next time I order something from Amazon.

 

[Syphon Filter]

Ahhhhhhh! I missed that bit.

Using the level slider is like essentially like adjusting the gain up or down. It should be fine because you're not really EQing it, just knocking the gain down.

I will give it a go.