Sound Blaster 5.1 VX - loudness on windows 7

[Teasy]

Okay, so I just moved from AC97 on my motherboard, because it was just terrible (got used to my Audigy ZS, which after 5 years unfortunately stopped working), to Sound Blaster 5.1 VX. Found 2 different drivers, one published by Creative, one published by a guy that improved those drivers. Both of them work well, with one huge "but". I've got the same problem as with AC97, meaning loudness. Even at full volume, it seems like 1/3 of my previous Audigy's loudness, and it can't get any louder, it's a bugger especially while watching movies etc, which at full volume sound like a whisper.

My question is: is there any way to fix that? Seems odd that i can't squeeze any more volume from my headphones (while listening to music from iPod, it just blows my mind, while on PC is shit, and a temporary fix, like download a player that exceeds over 100% volume is not a solution, it's a cheap way to get past that while the problem is still there.)

My motherboard is Asus P5QC, PSU Be Quiet 600W, running on Win7 64bit with Sennheiser HD 555 headphones (got also Sony MDR 570 and Sennheiser HD 201, every pair sounds as quiet as they are NOT).

[Deleted]

Is your program of choice in the volume mixer in the taskbar also at 100%? Maybe something in the audio settings of your player?