KVR Audio

e-crooner · Post by **e-crooner** » Fri Jan 24, 2020 9:47 pm

I am using the HD audio of my motherboard, works fine with ASIO4ALL.
Recently though there was a driver update for the Realtek audio chip of my motherboard, and since then there has clearly been more distortion. Has anyone else observed that?
Also, the new driver now includes an ASIO driver, but when I try to select it in my DAW, it doesn't work. Any solution?

(The Realtek chip is called ALC1220, by the way.)

nix808 · Post by **nix808** » Fri Jan 24, 2020 10:10 pm

Image-Line FLStudio includes a quasi ASIO driver,
as does MAGIX SoundForge and Acid
Maybe install the demos and see if those drivers are available,

-but my friend, a decent soundcard is the answer. I have 2 on this rig, I run U-toob and etc. media to listen to, and compose on the large one

I think Realtek have served me in the past

planetearth · Post by **planetearth** » Fri Jan 24, 2020 10:42 pm

e-crooner wrote: ↑Fri Jan 24, 2020 9:47 pm I am using the HD audio of my motherboard, works fine with ASIO4ALL.
Recently though there was a driver update for the Realtek audio chip of my motherboard, and since then there has clearly been more distortion. Has anyone else observed that?
Also, the new driver now includes an ASIO driver, but when I try to select it in my DAW, it doesn't work. Any solution?

(The Realtek chip is called ALC1220, by the way.)

Realtek doesn't make it easy to download their audio driver. Where did you get this "update"? (You can get the update through Windows Update on Win10 systems, but even then, it's pretty much only when Realtek feels like allowing it.) And what kind of distortion are you experiencing? Is it actual clipping/saturation distortion, or are you talking about pops and clicks?

Steve

e-crooner · Post by **e-crooner** » Fri Jan 24, 2020 10:55 pm

I found it on the ASrock site:
https://www.asrock.com/MB/AMD/Fatal1ty% ... p#Download

Yes, it sounds like clipping. I have the suspicion that the audio system's output is simply louder now, I turned the computer's main volume down 20% and now the clipping seems to be gone.
Weird

Steve Bolivar · Post by **Steve Bolivar** » Sat Jan 25, 2020 12:19 am

Is it possible the Realtek HD driver would affect the ASIO4ALL driver in your DAW? Did you update to the latest ASIO4ALL driver? Very strange.

sandyt88 · Post by **sandyt88** » Sat Jan 25, 2020 5:32 am

Your driver came with official realtek asio which very few people has actual hands-on experience with. You probably need to start with lowest bitrate and khz settings and slowly troubleshoot from there. Maybe uninstall asio4all if necessary (you can always reinstalled later).

But first thing you can do is to update your drivers to even more current one. Go to Microsoft Update Catalog and search realtek 1903 media and you will find the 6.0.8849.1 driver, download it, unzip it and update via device manager. Search realtek 1903 for the 11.0.6000.736 software component, download it, unzip it and update ALL the software components (audio effects, universal service, hardware support...) via device manager. After that, run Microsoft Store to update the realtek audio console app to 1.8.204.0.

Every couple of weeks, new drivers appear on the the microsoft update catalog. Next week, you are going to see 8858 driver and 1.9.205.0 app on the MUC. Two weeks after that, you are going to see 8868 driver and 1.9.209.0 app. Unfortunately the realtek asio driver rarely get updates.

e-crooner · Post by **e-crooner** » Sat Jan 25, 2020 8:50 pm

sandyt88 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 25, 2020 5:32 am Your driver came with official realtek asio which very few people has actual hands-on experience with. You probably need to start with lowest bitrate and khz settings and slowly troubleshoot from there. Maybe uninstall asio4all if necessary (you can always reinstalled later).

But first thing you can do is to update your drivers to even more current one. Go to Microsoft Update Catalog and search realtek 1903 media and you will find the 6.0.8849.1 driver, download it, unzip it and update via device manager. Search realtek 1903 for the 11.0.6000.736 software component, download it, unzip it and update ALL the software components (audio effects, universal service, hardware support...) via device manager. After that, run Microsoft Store to update the realtek audio console app to 1.8.204.0.

Every couple of weeks, new drivers appear on the the microsoft update catalog. Next week, you are going to see 8858 driver and 1.9.205.0 app on the MUC. Two weeks after that, you are going to see 8868 driver and 1.9.209.0 app. Unfortunately the realtek asio driver rarely get updates.

The ASIO4ALL driver works flawlessly. I was just curious to see if the Realtek one also works as people keep saying that a native driver is always better than ASIO4ALL. But it doesn't seem like it

I will try to reinstall the previous Realtek driver (the one without ASIO support), that worked fine.

sandyt88 · Post by **sandyt88** » Sat Jan 25, 2020 9:57 pm

You lost me a little bit here.

Since asio4all is just a wrapper for realtek's regular non-asio driver, if asio4all works flawlessly right now then it's not the fault of the new realtek asio driver. So there there is no need to rollback to an earlier realtek driver.

Did the earlier realtek driver came with the old Realtek HD Audio Manager (the one on the taskbar and in the control panel)? If so, then make sure that it is completely uninstalled (via settings, apps, uninstall).

e-crooner · Post by **e-crooner** » Sat Jan 25, 2020 10:35 pm

Well, basically there are two issues since the update:
- there is clipping regardless whether I use ASIO or not
- there is a native Realtek ASIO driver now, but it doesn't work, there is the error message "Couldn't start audio engine", regardless of the sampling rate I set.

When I turn down the computer's main volume to 70%, the clipping is gone. Not sure if clipping is to be expected at 100% or 90%.

I think there used to be some Realtek audio software, but I already uninstalled that a long time ago.

sandyt88 · Post by **sandyt88** » Sat Jan 25, 2020 11:27 pm

For the official realtek asio driver, is there anyway to disable audio input?

I am assuming you set it to stereo output only (not 7.1).

I am assuming that you are not recording directly into the line-in or mic-in, but instead uses a midi controller.

Markus Krause · Post by **Markus Krause** » Sun Jan 26, 2020 10:48 am

The Realtek chipsets are low quality and buggy. I recommend getting a proper soundcard

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Sun Jan 26, 2020 10:51 am

Markus Krause wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2020 10:48 am The Realtek chipsets are low quality and buggy. I recommend getting a proper soundcard

^^^ THIS ^^^

e-crooner · Post by **e-crooner** » Sun Jan 26, 2020 4:55 pm

Markus Krause wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2020 10:48 am The Realtek chipsets are low quality and buggy. I recommend getting a proper soundcard

They have come a long way. They were bad 15 years ago, but the latest ones are pretty good. Other companies such as Creative Labs use Realtek chips in some of their sound cards as well.

Markus Krause · Post by **Markus Krause** » Sun Jan 26, 2020 7:59 pm

Got a Realtek chipset in my gaming PC (I7 with MSI board). It outputs noise and lots of garbage. My studio PC with the RME card is next to it. Did an A\B comparison with the same speakers (Yamaha HS80) yesterday. The difference is huge - at least for me

e-crooner · Post by **e-crooner** » Sun Jan 26, 2020 8:10 pm

Well, RME are the best, so naturally you will detect quite a difference.
You are the guy from Tone2, right? So you need to have great equipment. I am just an amateur user, so the current solution is enough for me. If something sounds good even on my computer, it will sound even better on a professional system

Or is it the other way round?

One good thing about my mb based audio is that latency is very low.

Realtek HD audio driver update