Is it normal to have to lower overall volume to 20%?

[Salem Graves]

I have my headset plugged into the top headphone port on my pc. It's labeled as "Speakers/Headphones (Realtek Audio)" Most of the time I use Voicemeeter banana for my headset and microphone audio, but I've decided to play Red Dead Redemption 2 again and the audio crackles in that game and the only solution I've found is to stop using voicemeeter and just use my speakers normally. But after turning off voicemeeter, I opened a YouTube video to test and it was so loud I thought both my headphones and my ears were going to explode, I had to lower overall volume in the mixer to 20% for it to be at a reasonable volume, is this normal or is something not right?

[_I_]

get the correct sound drivers from the mobo mfg or oem site

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Your extra app is probably boosting the volume but since it's a software boost and not a hardware amp; it's coming out distorted at higher volumes.

It's best to just not use an sound enhancement software unless selecting Headphones + Dolby or Windows Sonic sounds better overall. Then in the Realtek Audio, enable option for Virtual Surround. Then in games such as RDR2 change the in-game audio from Stereo to Surround.

If audio still crackles it could be due to very high CPU usage. Games such as RDR2 have an in-game setting to adjust the audio latency to help compensate for this. Also in RDR2 by default the music is very loud, set the music to around 30-40% and have the SFX and Dialogue set to 100%

Then set Windows Master Volume to 100%

And see how it does like that.

Get the Realtek Audio Driver from Motherboard makers support site for exact model of Motherboard since Realtek no longer offers stand-alone drivers. When these drivers are correct your audio ports should work via hotplug. Where when you plug in your headset or speakers it should ask you in the Realtek Audio Manager what you want that port/device set as.