Not enough Power from Mobo to ATH IM70 results in muffled sound

when i used to own a mac and a alienware laptop i had no problem using my audiotechnica IM70 in ear headphones. loud and clear audio and it was great, i still get this audio when using other pc or my mate 8 smartphone… BUTTT!!!

when i plug into my MSI Z170A Krait Gaming 3X Motherboard on my gaming / workstation pc the audio is half quality and the volume is almost nothing, as such ive been forced to game with a corsair void headset that is far louder and more clear.

my Question is this. what do i need to power these earphones so i can run these like i used too, these are 10 ohm.
im looking at the Behinger 302USB but been recommended by a mate to get the 2i2 audio interface.
please help.

Do you have the audio drivers installed? The right ones. Im guessing the Voids are USB.
otherwise whats your price range?

If all you are looking fore is to push the headphone volume then what you want is a headphone amplifier. These may fit the bill the only draw back being you wont be able to plug a microphone in.




The nice thing with the 2i2 is you would have a microphone jack but I have heard that the headphone amp is not the best which might cause problems driving your headphones.

yes i have the latest and i uninstalled nahimic to make sure it was not doing any unwanted EQ etc

Yea the only mic i would be using is a Antlion modmic which seems to have decent audio assuming logan didnt use a interface to clean up the gain etc when he did his review.

I find very hard to believe that you cant power IEMs off a motherboard.
Im honestly not sure if an amp would solve this problem.
are you going off the back of the PC or the front panel?

Rear panel headphone in. And yea im kinda shocked as well as i didnt want to buy a new sound product thinking my current motherboarda t purchase would be all i needed.

something has to be messed up with either software or hardware. its one thing that its too quite but if the audio quality is bad then thats something else. All an amp is going to is make things louder. And a DAC might help but if the signal is all fucked it isnt going to help much. well unless its usb
do you have any other headphones you can try?

ok so i tested with crysis 3 and this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnWp3Odu1Pk

what i did was i plugged in my im70 and a 10$ pair of earphones from a electronic store.
the 10$ was louder and clear the im70 was clear but sound was like 40% even with max ingame audio and windows settings etc.

looks like its a amp problem. as on my mate 8 the earphones with the same audio test minus crysis 3 was loud and clear.

Ok thats super strange.
whats your price point
do you need a mixer? like you posted above?

i do not need a mixer that i know of tbh.
when i do get around to ordering a dynamic mic i might end up using one but thats future proofing right?

the 302USb im unsure will acturally power the headphones i can't find anything online about it.

also my price point is about 150 AUD and i have to rule out importing as it basically is way to expensive and amazon half the time does not ship to me

the 302USB isnt an amp its a preamp. Its made for sending signals to speakers. It wont actually boost the volume of anything and might actual make things quieter.
so what are options are far as companies that will ship to you and or whats available?
I live in the US so I can get anything and have no idea

i have done some massive bios and realtek updates and its somewhat fixed the issue i think its just bad firmware or hardware on the board, ive since purchased a very good condition preowned Fiio E10k Olympus 2 on ebay for $76 australian which was recommended by shadowvengence22.

i do thank you for the help and will post back on my results in a few days when this arrives.

so im still waiting on the amp to arrive but since these posts i have changed case and have direct access to the front audio [ like 30cm from my head ] and well the audio is fine and same for back panel.. ive updated realtek and bios etc still so im unsure whats changed.

could be the following.

1, bios
2, realtek updating with fixes
3, new case
4, NO IO SHIELD

yea i kinda left my back motherboard panel in my old case that i ebayed. and well its gone now haha fml.

Only thing I can think of would be you had something shorted maybe. Like a screw or some metal peice or a cable going over the wrong section of the board. Like a power cable or a data cable or something too close to the audio section.

yea possibly due to the old case being a 600c from corsair it was cramped and hard to work with but since i moved to a core x9 its all g. still got the amp coming to up the volume regardless lol

well the amp came and it fixed all my issues even cleaned up the audio ive not heard the real qaulity of the IM70 now. very happy thanks guys!