ALC889A, Vista x64, Speaker Fill = rear speakers distorted

Because of the recent fiasco with Creative / Daniel K the straw has broken the camels back and I am trying real hard to not use my X-Fi XtremeGamer, and never buy Creative again. Although I didn't personally have many issues with it (and Alchemy is great for Vista...wish there was one for everyone) I don't want to spend my life wondering what will happen next with my drivers..

I have a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R rev 1.0. This board has the Realtek ALC889A chip and when I first started using it in XP I was so very impressed with both the quality and the features. Specifically speaker fill. I love upmixing my music to 5.1 and at the time I was having weird issues with Creatives own expansion setting so I happily used my onboard for quite a while.

Then I decided to upgrade to Vista and noticed immediately that things were not working the way they had on XP.. DirectSound removal aside, I couldn't even get music to upmix properly.. So here I am again, trying to get by without my X-Fi and I've installed the latest drivers from Realtek's web site for Vista x64.

When I enable speaker fill, the rear speakers output sound at a pretty low level, but when you get up close to check them, it is clearly putting out distorted audio. The only way I can describe it is that the rear's sound like you are listening to low-bitrate audio from an Internet station, and seems to be concentrated at the high end of the freqency spectrum. I don't understand why it worked fine in XP x64, and it works ok in Kubuntu 8.04 Hardy as well. I don't even need to do anything special in Linux, I just adjust the individual channel levels to balance out the sound.. SO I'm not sure why it doesn't work that way on Windows; even still I am about to reinstall XP x64 today to verify it still works properly there.

I have tried drivers from my original gigabyte CD, and from their web site.. The installer runs but the sound doesn't work at all.. like the drivers don't work for the device.. (I'm sure it's nothing but Linux identifies my onboard as another model).

The only other thing I can think after playing with all the drivers is to possibly try Vista x32, so I am really at a loss about what to do here.. The only other thing I can add is that different MP3's play better than others, however they all play just fine in Linux so the problem can't be the files..

Has anyone else at least experienced this same problem? It would be good to know at least that much..

Thanks.

Hi, Zach, and welcome to the forums.

You might try Guru3D - Driver Sweeper to remove your currently installed drivers, and then try installing the latest version only....

1. Download the Driver Sweeper package, and install it.
2. Reboot into Safe Mode
3. Run Driver Sweeper and select teh Realtek Audio drivers for removal.
4. Remove them
5. Reboot and allow to normally boot into Vista
6. Install the R1.96 drivers.

See if this method allows for hte driver to work correctly.

I'm in the middle of backing up my primary drive so I can do a clean install of several OS's so I will report back on my findings.

Thanks

Ok right now I'm on XP x64 and I nearly freaked out because I saw that my speaker fill option was gone. Couldn't find it anywhere, but I crossed my fingers and opened WMP and started to play a couple MP3's.

It looks like as far as XP goes, it now handles the cloning automatically, like Kubuntu Linux does for me. All speakers are adjustable on their respective channels. And thankfully unlike I experienced in Vista x64, there is no distortion or weird sounding / low quality/volume issues. All speakers come out crystal clear.. In fact I think my bass response is stronger now as I had to turn it down on my speaker controls (Logitech X-540's)

I am still fearful of when I get around to installing Vista... but I will report back when that happens.. I did read elsewhere that people suspect Vista is adding its own crappy echo effect to the audio and even when you turn off environmental settings it is still forcing it through.. There is also no equalizer in Vista, just presets... kind of annoying as well.

Hi Zach, I have the EXACT same problem. I seriously do not want to re-install windows xp x64 again... I just finished upgrading last week .

What solutions do you have when running Vista x64? I can't stand the fact that my brand new speakers sound distorted from the two rear ones.

(BTW, I'm using Logitech X-530's)

To be honest, I haven't reinstalled Vista x64 yet.. Right now I am on XP x86, SP3. I kind of installed it to test some older games out and got lazy for the time being. It still does work brilliantly under XP though.

I know that after I removed Vista there was an updated driver pack, and I will check again when I do finally get around to installing Vista again; however updated drivers is really the only solution/recourse I can see for this issue at the current time.

I really feel it's got to be an issue with drivers, as it clearly functions well under XP.. But moving to Vista its a different OS, and then to make matters worse, Microsoft decided to change the way sound works by removing the DirectSound HAL. I have heard theories that Windows is applying some stupid reverb effect by default, among other things that could account for the distortion. I know some of my songs do play better than others, and can sound improved/worse if I do play with the EQ settings.. The fact there is really no EQ in Vista is another blow to the drivers as well.

I also forget to add that im using an Asus M2N-X mobo with the Realtek ALC883-GR 6-channel Codec. Seems Realtek his driver issues with Vista x64...

I did try the latest drivers from both Asus website and Realtek and still the same problem occurs.

I'm going to dual boot XP x64 and see if that helps.

Realtek and drivers work perfectly fine on my machine except for 1.93.

What Realtek driver are you using? And do you have a 5.1 audio setup that has the rear speakers working flawlessly?

I also have the exact same problem with my new speakers and I also upgraded my drivers and there was no difference at all