Sound Issue with Gigabyte Motherboard

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Sabaku no Gabo

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Aug 3, 2014
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Hi! How ya doing? I need some help with a motherboard I have:

I have a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 rev 1.0 mounted in a Corsair 300r. The motherboard works just great but I recently discovered an "issue" in the sound cards. I jack some headphones in the 7.1 back panel of the motherboard and it sounds a tad lower than the front panel (like 35% lower) I jack the same headphones in the front panel and it sounds normal .Maybe it is because the back panel has 7.1 or something, but I set the back panel for stereo and still got lower sound. Any help will be appreciated a lot. Thanks!!

Pd: I have jacked a Razer Lycosa with a mic and audio bridge on the keyboard. I tried connecting directly the headphones to the jack but still got lower sound.

Link to the Motherboard Page: http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3891#ov
 
Solution
nukemaster
Some boards have a headphone amp for the front port.

This allows more current to drive headphones. You would be surprised how low the current sent to a amplifier is in an analog setup.

Another possibility is that gigabyte has included a resistor in line with the output ports on the back of the board.

This is a common practice that can reduce extra unwanted noise when running longer cables or even using a splitter(in line level devices). A common value could be anything from 40-100ohms.

Now when you connect that to a normal set of computer speakers that is seen as a 10 000 ohm load, it has an unnoticeable effect(0.02 volt loss @ 2 volts and a 100ohm resistor) on the sound level, but when you connect 16-64ohm headphones a large...
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nukemaster

nukemaster

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Nov 23, 2004
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Some boards have a headphone amp for the front port.

This allows more current to drive headphones. You would be surprised how low the current sent to a amplifier is in an analog setup.

Another possibility is that gigabyte has included a resistor in line with the output ports on the back of the board.

This is a common practice that can reduce extra unwanted noise when running longer cables or even using a splitter(in line level devices). A common value could be anything from 40-100ohms.

Now when you connect that to a normal set of computer speakers that is seen as a 10 000 ohm load, it has an unnoticeable effect(0.02 volt loss @ 2 volts and a 100ohm resistor) on the sound level, but when you connect 16-64ohm headphones a large portion of the signal is lost to the resistor.

It works as a voltage divider.

Now only Gigabyte can be 100% sure about this.

You could use a buffer(non inverting opamp as a voltage follower works well for this test) with a high input impudence(all opamps tend to be like this on the non inverting input) to drive the headphones and if the volume jumps up, then either the sound card can not deliver the needed current or has a resistor inline. This is a good bit of extra work and would only be useful for someone who is just curious.

I have actually tested this on my media center and ALL of its headphone ports do not drive headphones very well. With the right setup you can use a switch to bypass the buffer and select each to hear the difference. My X-fi card on the other had just does not care what I connect and would blow my headphones if I let it.

All of this does not effect me because I use speakers, but my brother has complained about his headphones being too quiet in the past. I am 90% sure he has the same issue.
 
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