Sorry to "Necro" an old thread with a similar issue with the board and drivers. I just did a fresh install of win 10 x64 after upgrading my SSD from an OCZ Agility 3 240GB to a Samsung 850 Pro 1TB. I've spent maybe the last 24-36 hours trying to meand this small problem I have.
Basically my left speaker is louder than the right, by about 50%. I've done all the checks in the world, trouble-shooted nearly every setting in the BIOS, ran about 10-15 different win 10 x64 installs with different combinations of doing the drivers + a clone. And every time I'm running into the same issue. It's a tiny issue I know, but I love my sounds. I use a 2.1 Microlabs solution but it kicks. My wireless H2100 works fine and the balance is even, not that it shouldn't be anyway as it's USB. I have my speakers plugged into the back in the mobo's green port. If I use the driver from the motherboard disk it works fine ish and the sound is even but its a really old driver, DirectX11 and sounds nowhere near as good as "pre-fiddle" a couple days ago, and the Microsoft's standard driver sounds even worse. I've tried about 10 different drivers that I could find so far around Google all with the same issue.
Going into properties on the speakers and then into the Enhancements tab, if I click "Disable all sound effects" and then try playing a song, the balance reverts to an even balance but I lose all features and decent audio quality. Changing a setting back in the audio control panel reverts the balance back to un-even. I'm at a loss so I thought I'd ask for help in the community, maybe there's a conflict I'm not aware of or the board doesn't support my drive? I installed Win 10 x64 this time round using the UEFI mode, for the first time, so perhaps it could be that? I loved the way the UEFI stuff starts up and how quick it is but if it's causing a conflict I think I can do without it. I thought for a while it could be the Realtek drivers, but I've not had this issue before and I've installed Win 10 x64 on this machine a few times with no problems at all. So my best guess is there's a conflict with the Realtek driver and the Samsung controller/driver/whatever, or a conflict with something else. I've tried different cables, different sources, different drivers. Before I had any issues, I think I was using the latest Realtek drivers on the Hero VI's support page for Win 10 x64 and never had a problem - 6.0.1.7525. Now, all but the oldest Realtek drivers work. I should also add that I haven't been able to wait around for the SSD to do a whole benchmark unaided yet, as when I tried with AS SSD, the 4K timer went up-to like 45 minutes so I quit the test, but with Rapid mode enabled it smokes the scores into the thousands, a bit peculiar that it wont do it without Rapid mode mind, Samsung's own performance test in the Magician does the same too, so I haven't done a full test unaided. Crystal disk mark worked fine unaided however. All the stats say it's good in the Magician, although I'm unable to enable the Write-cache buffer which I think is due to the IRST stuff. The firmware says its up-to date.
Sorry for the long winded issue, it's a small thing but I don't want to move on without fixing it in case I break something, or have to wipe again to fix it 🙂
So any help would be greatly appreciated. I never received any of the buzzing or crackling issues using this boards on board sound. The Microsoft default driver and the motherboard disk's driver audio quality is really quite poor in comparison to what it was like.
I'm going to bed, thank you in advance!
i7 4770k @ 4.5Ghz
Noctua NH-D14
16gb 1866Mhz HyperX
Maxiums VI Hero
EVGA 980 ti Classified
Corsair AX860
1 TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD (OS + some games) ((WHEN I GET IT ALL SORTED :())
2x2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD (Storage)
HAF 922
Corsair K70 RGB & M65 RGB
Win 10 Pro x64
Asus Rog Swift
Xbox one wireless pads and 360.