Flat Sound After Installing Realtek Drivers

[Xolaste]

Hello, I have a TUF GAMING B850-PLUS WIFI motherboard. When using my soundbar, the audio from the 3.5mm line out port sounds as expected with the default Windows drivers, but as soon as I switch to the Realtek drivers, the bass becomes very low and the audio sounds flat. I've tried the drivers from the motherboard's support page, as well as the more up-to-date ones from @MoKiChU's thread. They all sound terrible, even when I disable audio enhancements/DTS.

Hopefully this is not an issue specific to my motherboard because I really don't wanna go through all the trouble of returning it. Since audio is fine with default Windows drivers I don't think the sound chip (ALC1220) can be faulty? 

[Zalevskiy]

Standard Microsoft drivers are certified by MS, while proprietary Asus drivers are very unpredictable and degrade the sound after flashing or after the certificates expire.

You can try AAF drivers from enthusiasts, or experiment with drivers from similar Asus models. I have a similar problem on my laptop: if I install the Asus ISST 8102, the configurator code for my model sounds very distorted. The Len**vo ISST 8102 is much better (the drivers are the same + certificate random oem). Finally, if I downgrade Windows to 21H2-22H2 or install an OEM image from a similar system with a registry configuration based on a different chip (the drivers are the same, and regedit settings ALC294=ALC285), the same driver sounds as good as when I bought it.

TPM protection is a real hassle.

[Xolaste]

Interesting, thanks for the input. The funny thing is I used a Z97-A motherboard for several years which has an earlier ALC892 sound chip and it never suffered from this. The driver quality must have gotten worse over the years because this is just unacceptable.

I'll stick with Windows drivers for now because I just want the pure, unprocessed signal. Realtek drivers seem to be applying a filter no matter what I disable.

[Terepin]

I tried them and they are broken. Even if set in control panel, no app can play a 6 channel audio.

[Terepin]

I can confirm that the sound is much better with the stock drivers. However, they are os barebones that absolutely nothing else works - neither control panel, nor Sonic Studio.

[Xolaste]

I read about installing the drivers through device manager. Apparently that way the third-party filters won't be installed. I haven't tried it myself since I'm fine with the Microsoft drivers, but it might be worth a try. You'd probably have to install Realtek Audio Console manually through Microsoft Store.

[Terepin]

Sadly that didn't work. The reason being control panel requires also Realtek services and even after installing those manually it still wouldn't start.

[Tarvoskemwer]

I got the same issue some time ago on TUF GAMING X670E-PLUS, which also have the ALC1220 chip, I didn't really notice the exact date of the switch, but I did find a workaround to get midtones and bass back. I noticed that I could get it briefly back by wiping the driver and the apps entirely, then reinstalling - but something would quickly trigger a change so the audio became flat and the mini-jack detection also seemed to be a potential trigger.
So, I removed both the DTS-app and the Realtek-panel, and cleared the apo stuff etc. with DriverStoreExplorer.
- and that sorted the issue for me, and I recently updated to a later driver just using Glenn Delahoys Snappy Driver Installer Origin
As I have Dolby Access anyway, then I can alter my sound there for game, movis, music etc.

I suspect the problem came in an update of the Realtek panel, but as I do not use any of the other features and use Dolby Access instead, then it's really no problem running with a fairly barebone driver. Posting a picture from DriverStoreExplorer to show what I got left.

[Xolaste]

Thanks for explaining the process on how to get things working. I've emailed ASUS support about my driver woes and the guy told me that they will report it to the developers. Don't know if anything useful will come out of it, I wouldn't hold my breath.

I've actually made Dell fix the god-awful Realtek MaxxAudio drivers once by nagging them on the forums so you never know. Companies seem to be more lax with software QA these days, vibecoding maybe?

[Tarvoskemwer]

I'm satisfied running a bare bones driver, but if I wanted to test it further, then I'd roll back to something like 9700 or 9448 - if either of those worked, then you'd know for sure that it's the driver, and not related to the Realtek-panel and/or a Windows update. Ruling out windows is a lot more tedious, as you'd have to try the latest driver on older version.