Asus on-board Realtek Audio problem

EonityLuna · August 5, 2016

Hey guys, first let me start by listing out relevant specs:

motherboard: Asus Z97-Deluxe/USB 3.1
operating system: Windows 10 Anniversary Update (version 1607, build 14393.10)
speakers: Bose Companion 2 Series III

Alright, so here's my problem. I decided to go to Asus's web site to check for driver updates. Seeing there were updated drivers for my Realtek on-board sound card, I downloaded and installed them.

This is where the problem starts. Upon installing the new drivers and restarting, my audio quality became very poor; the sound became very "scratchy" and there was almost no sound on the right channel. I fired up the Realtek HD Audio Manager (which I never otherwise touch), and after fiddling around with the settings, I noticed that my audio quality only becomes acceptable if I set the Amplifier Setting to Auto Switch, and that is only if I have the option to mute the rear audio ports when the front audio port is connected set in the Option dialog.

I thought this was an issue with the latest drivers, so I installed the older version, but the problem persisted. Uninstalled the Realtek drivers completely and using the default Microsoft drivers didn't help either; audio quality remained poor and worse, there was no option anywhere to get my audio quality back.

I have ruled out my speakers as being the source of the problem, as they functioned ok when I connected them to my iPhone and played a few songs on it. If I tried to use my earphones (Apple EarPods) to connect to the rear audio jack, no sound can be heard unless the Amplifier Setting is in Auto Switch.

I have visually inspected my motherboard for any signs of obvious damage (blown capacitors, burnt components, etc.) but could find nothing wrong.

In case anyone still doesn't understand the issue here, I recorded a short video demonstrating the issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcFzCodxDlM

Can anyone figure out what's wrong here? I really hope it isn't an issue with the on-board sound card.

Curufinwe_wins · August 5, 2016

21 minutes ago, eXAKR said:

snip

It may very well be a limitation of the audio solution. I don't seem to remember being able to get both the rear and front audio on my asus motherboard to work simultaneously, but I haven't tried using the front panel ones in almost a year.

What I do is use the rear io for headset and displayport audio passthrough from my monitor hooked up to my speakers. Then I have a macro that lets me swap between them on the fly. (google soundswitch).

EonityLuna · August 5, 2016

6 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

It may very well be a limitation of the audio solution. I don't seem to remember being able to get both the rear and front audio on my asus motherboard to work simultaneously, but I haven't tried using the front panel ones in almost a year.

What I do is use the rear io for headset and displayport audio passthrough from my monitor hooked up to my speakers. Then I have a macro that lets me swap between them on the fly. (google soundswitch).

Thing is when I have the audio amplified setting set to Front Panel a few months ago it didn't have this problem.

And the reason why I checked for popped capacitors was because I swore I heard some loud popping noises in my room, which I suspect was from my computer before (I have suffered from blown capacitors before, so I should know), though I didn't find anything on that front. Hmmm.