What's happening with the audio for MAXIMUS VIII FORMULA with Windows 10 v1803?

[unzen]

Hi,

Apologies if this has been covered before, but having spent a while trying to find a working solution, it appears that nothing I do will get Sonic Studio working on my Formula VIII mobo. Any help would be much appreciated.

The issue started when I decided to do a complete reformat. The PC hadn't been wiped in over a year and as a rule, I tend to do it every six months or so. The v1803 update of Windows 10 had recently been released and had been applied to my PC - all was good and all was working.

Having downloaded all the latest audio, graphics and auxiliary drivers to a folder on my 2nd SSD, I blitzed the 1st SSD and performed a clean install. Windows 10 went through its motions and all seemed good. The chipset driver went on, the USB3 driver, the latest one from nVidia for the 1080 and so on. Except, when it came to the Realtek audio - this is where it failed completely.

On previous reformats, it states that it has to remove the existing driver first and will then apply the new set of audio drivers upon reboot. I'm assuming from this that it preinstalls the ones that Windows 10 gives it in order to have 'some' functioning audio.

However, now when trying to apply the latest Realtek audio driver on v1803, it gets stuck in a perpetual loop of installing/uninstalling. Forcing Windows 10 not to automatically install its preferred driver does nothing - which from what I've read maybe an issue with the Home Edition specifically and not one that effects the Pro version?

Because the Realtek drivers are not installed - in turn makes the Sonic Studio not get installed either. I have one-half of literally nothing in terms of audio functionality now. Basic headphone audio - but no mic. I've got no EQ functions or anything, which I've relied upon since having this motherboard from new.

Strangely, if in the extracted drivers folder, I manually navigate to the Sonic Studio section and try to install it that way, I get the attached message?

As mentioned initially, any help or suggestions would be much appreciated. I don't really want to be holding out for v1809 in the vain hope that this issue gets resolved!

Many thanks.

[pndiode]

Sonic Studio 3 is not compatible with the VIII Formula SupremeFX sound chipset.

I never used Sonic Studio 2 after the upgrade and had no installation problems on Windows 10 Pro v1803, OS Build 17134.228.

Driver before installation (Device Manager/ Sound, video and game controllers/Realtek High Definition Audio):



Downloaded (right clicked and unblocked file) and extracted file (Realtek_AudioDriver_Win7-10_V6018158_20170607) to new folder, selected AsusSetup it does not matter if run as administrator or just double click.

Then I got this warning followed by a quick flash of a small gray box with letters and it then disappeared (no restart required, but I restarted anyway, because SupremeFX was stopped during installation and did not open when I plugged in the headset or microphone):




Driver after installation (Device Manager/ Sound, video and game controllers/Realtek High Definition Audio):




EQ Functions and Microphone work. Tested microphone using Windows Settings/Privacy/ Microphone –off, microphone not working. Turned back on and microphone works.

I did experience the loop of installing and uninstalling with Windows 10 Pro V1709. Once the program uninstalled the driver, I restarted and when it installed the driver, I did not restart the computer. I think I ended the process in Task Manager, rebooted and Sonic Studio 2 worked.

Anyway, I never installed Sonic Studio 2 and Sonic Radar 2 until now, just to see if it worked.

[unzen]

Thanks for the above - I'll give that a retry tonight.

Interesting that you mention the install/uninstall loop happening too. I had to kill the process within Task Manager as well to get any further - but once I shutdown the PC and came back to it the following day, the process would start again.

As I eluded to in my first post, prior to the format, my PC was running v1709 with no issues. It then upgraded to v1803, again with no issues. It was only when I did a clean reformat using v1803 that these issues cropped up. Also, I note that you're using Pro and not the Home Edition and have read of clear distinctions between the two regarding driver installs. I have got access to an edition of Pro, so that might be a future test to do?

Regardless, I'll try your suggestions above. Hopefully its purely down to me being stupid and have been missing the obvious!

Thanks again.

[unzen]

So, I tried that yesterday and saw the exact same results with the updated driver dates that you posted. It also 'appeared' to install Sonic Studio amazingly quickly too - almost like it couldn't have possibly done it in the time that it took.

However, I did appear to get more functionality through AND interestingly, I didn't get the uninstall/install loop happening this time. There's the possibility that one of the several updates within Window 10 since the release of v1803 has fixed this issue - but who knows?

On the face of it, it's working like it used to - which is obviously great. I haven't tried the headphone setup yet, but will be doing over the next day or two.

Thanks again for your help!

[pndiode]

You’re welcome and I’m glad it’s working like it used too.

Microsoft usually releases Cumulative Updates for Windows at least once a month.

Microsoft Windows 10 October 2018 update is on the way. Microsoft will likely wrap up the development of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update at the end of September and it should be publicly available for download in early October.