Audio Problem, Or: Why You Should Never Try to Fix Things

The Rogue Wolf

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So for some time now, a number of games have been causing stuttering issues on my computer. A latency monitor pegged one of the culprits as my sound driver (Realtek HD Audio), so I attempted to update it with drivers from the builder's website. Unfortunately there were two problems: The website sucks in telling you exactly which model the drivers are for, and the installer doesn't check to see if the new drivers are valid before uninstalling the old ones.

Whee.

So having to track down the proper drivers from the Realtek site (which is an object lesson in absolutely garbage web design, and also limits downloads to twenty KILOBYTES per second), I installed them properly, and found that the stuttering virtually disappeared, but ran into another problem- the Audio Manager, Realtek's separate program for managing audio options, absolutely will not work with this version. The issue here is that the Audio Manager is the ONLY apparent way to get the computer's front audio jacks to work (which is very useful for having both headphones and speakers attached). The only potential fix I've found is going back to the previous drivers.

Does anyone know of another way to get the front audio jacks to work in Windows 10?
 

Gordon_4

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So for some time now, a number of games have been causing stuttering issues on my computer. A latency monitor pegged one of the culprits as my sound driver (Realtek HD Audio), so I attempted to update it with drivers from the builder's website. Unfortunately there were two problems: The website sucks in telling you exactly which model the drivers are for, and the installer doesn't check to see if the new drivers are valid before uninstalling the old ones.

Whee.

So having to track down the proper drivers from the Realtek site (which is an object lesson in absolutely garbage web design, and also limits downloads to twenty KILOBYTES per second), I installed them properly, and found that the stuttering virtually disappeared, but ran into another problem- the Audio Manager, Realtek's separate program for managing audio options, absolutely will not work with this version. The issue here is that the Audio Manager is the ONLY apparent way to get the computer's front audio jacks to work (which is very useful for having both headphones and speakers attached). The only potential fix I've found is going back to the previous drivers.

Does anyone know of another way to get the front audio jacks to work in Windows 10?
If its an onboard soundcard, don't go to Realtek's website, go to the Motherboard manufacturer website and look up the model of board. Get the latest onboard sound drivers from there.

As for the audio jacks, they just need to be plugged into the designated socket on the motherboard from the case.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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If its an onboard soundcard, don't go to Realtek's website, go to the Motherboard manufacturer website and look up the model of board. Get the latest onboard sound drivers from there.
I've tried that, and get this: They're the wrong drivers. (I need drivers for Realtek HD audio, while the Asus site has only Realtek. The drivers work, but they're missing several optimizations.)

As for the audio jacks, they just need to be plugged into the designated socket on the motherboard from the case.
Okay, let me clarify: The front jacks were working fine until I updated the drivers. The problem is that they were depending on the Audio Manager to split audio to them, and apparently that program does not work with these new drivers. What I'm hoping for is a different way to get Windows to do so without the Audio Manager program, or else I'll have to downgrade to the previous drivers and suffer the stuttering again.
 

Baffle

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I don't know much about this sort of thing, but every time I update my Nvidia graphics driver, it cocks audio up (assigns it to itself, which I am not plugged into for audio). I realise this isn't likely helpful, just pointing out that updating my GPU driver bodges my sound too.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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I don't know much about this sort of thing, but every time I update my Nvidia graphics driver, it cocks audio up (assigns it to itself, which I am not plugged into for audio). I realise this isn't likely helpful, just pointing out that updating my GPU driver bodges my sound too.
I had this happen in my nVidia days too (currently running AMD) and, if I'm remembering correctly, it happens when you have nVidia's audio drivers installed and do an "express" update, which updates them and marks them as default. You should be able to uninstall them completely, or at the least do a custom update and deselect the audio drivers.
 

Gordon_4

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I don't know much about this sort of thing, but every time I update my Nvidia graphics driver, it cocks audio up (assigns it to itself, which I am not plugged into for audio). I realise this isn't likely helpful, just pointing out that updating my GPU driver bodges my sound too.
I assume this is a consequence of video cards using HDMI and ergo capable of delivering sound to an equipped device like a receiver or monitor/television.
 

Phoenixmgs

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I'd go to your motherboard's support page and download the drivers there with such limited info to go off of. It could be any of a number of things. There's a quite few things that pop up on a google search of front panel not working from disabling front panel detection in the Audio Manager to disabling fast startup. You say the audio manager doesn't work but you can also do it via editing the registry with instructions here.

Also, you should always try to fix things, just do it smartly. It only takes a couple minutes to image the C drive. All you have to do is create an image before fucking around and if you FUBAR something, just restore the image. Images are also why there's really no point in anti-viruses as it takes longer for an antivirus to run a scan than it takes to restore a previous good image. I only do the Windows feature updates twice a year, and I always create an image first in case I have to go back. I didn't like last fall's Windows 10 update so I just restored the image and my computer is back up and running in 3 minutes. I've been slacking on this spring's update and haven't even tried it yet, I'll probably just wait for the fall update at this point. Updates have a habit of breaking things more than fixing things so only look for an update if something isn't running well and you're hoping for a fix vs updating something that's working perfectly fine. I have Windows update completely turned off nor do I even run any kind of anti-virus, Windows Defender is even turned off, I don't need pointless things running on my PCs.
 
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hanselthecaretaker

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It almost sounds like having to use a legacy program for those drivers, in which case I’m wondering if there’s a compatibility mode that’s possible or needs to be used.