New Creative Driver = Sudden System-Wide Volume Increase??

[Sczee]

I have been running Vista Ultimate x64 for about a year now in conjunction with a Creative XtremeMusic sound card. Everything was fine until yesterday I decided to update every program and driver I had installed on my computer (I had assignments due the next day, what else was I supposed to do? ). Well after I did this everything still worked fine apart from one thing, the sound level of every sound device was now at least twice as loud as it had been previously at the same Windows volume level. Eg. I used to have the volume level set at 50 all the time and have my speakers on about 3, now I have the volume level set at about 25 and the speakers still at 3 for the same overall volume.

The only thing I installed/updated which could have any affect on this was the sound card driver; it was the latest driver which was out at Christmas time and I updated it to 2.18.004 which is the most recent driver release. I could perhaps kind of understand this if it was only the Creative X-FI sound device which was affected as Creative may have arbitrarily decided to make their card output at a higher volume, but it has also affected the onboard audio on my motherboard. I have both the Creative sound card and the onboard enabled so that I can have my headphones and my speakers both plugged in at the same time (stupid Creative card with no front port header) which leaves me with two sound devices; the Logitech Speakers which are run off the Creative sound card, and my headphones which are run off the onboard audio (I used to have both set at a volume level of 50 and have now had to change both to around 25).

Seeing as both the sound devices are affected I'm thinking that some base sound level setting has been raised by the new driver or something. The problem is as far as I know there is no base sound level which is why I'm asking for help here .

So basically what I want to know is how could installing a new driver (or anything else for that matter) have caused this volume change to occur? And if anyone can tell me this, could they also indicate how to reverse the change as its kinda annoys me. I know my way around the Creative Audio Console pretty well so I think I have ruled out any setting in that which I can change to fix the problem which leaves the problem squarely at Windows' doorstep. The only Windows sound controls I know of are the Sound Control Panel which is pretty simple and self-explanatory so is there any other way to change the sound settings within Windows?

Thanks if anyone can help.

System is as follows:
Intel E6600 @ 3.2GHz (8x400MHz) | Nvidia 8800GTX | Asus P5K Deluxe | 4GB Corsair 6400C4D DDR2-800 | Creative XtremeMusic |
2x320GB Seagate 7200.10 + 500GB Seagate 7200.11 | Corsair 620HX PSU | Lian Li PC-V2000B Plus II | Dell 2707WFP 27" Monitor |
Logitech Z-5500 Speakers | Razer DeathAdder Mouse | Razer Lycosa Keyboard | Sennheiser PC161 Headphones

 

[Brahmzy]

This new driver has done the volume thing to everybody. I don't mind it - I like the new driver.

 

[Sczee]

This new driver has done the volume thing to everybody. I don't mind it - I like the new driver.

Right ok I guess its not that big a deal and I also like the new driver apart from the volume change. Thanks for letting me know.

 

[wildfire99]

They were getting a lot of complaints about the use of a linear/log hybrid volume adjustment solution. Perhaps they went to straight logarithmic, and thus changed the relative levels of ouput from 0-100 (e.g. whereas before '10' may have been +10db gain, now it's +16 gain). I hated having to set the master volume from 10-15 just for normal use then having to crank it to 100 just to get decent levels out of any DVDs.