Fix for quiet sound in Vista

I recently bought a new system for gaming and I haven't gotten new speakers for it yet. So I decided to use my old emachines speakers, but they were ridiculously quiet in Vista even with volume maxed in control panel and the latest drivers from both realtek and the latest default driver. Kept trying to figure out a fix for this problem, and it turns out all you have to do is switch the type of output it is in the realtek audio manager from speaker out to headphone out. It about doubles the volume. Just sharing this experience in case anyone else is having any serious trouble with volume in vista.

And as a side note, does anyone know a decent pair of speakers for around $40-50 and perhaps a little more?

I've been having problems with low audio in Vista too - just worked out that the volume in Realtek Sound Manager had reset itself somehow, though in WMP and the Sound Mixer the volume was at top level. It does that quite regularly for some reason. To check the sound volume go to Program Files/Realtek/InstallShield/RTSndMgr.cpl. I'm glad I found the solution, thought I was losing my hearing!

OMG! I was in your exact situation, using old speakers with a new computer. Bin fed up with it for months. Thanks so much for this hint, got it working thanks to you. Thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks, and thanks!!!!!!