What Is Realtek High Definition Audio Driver Windows 10
Mina Spartin
MiniTool OEM program enable partners like hardware / software vendors and relative technical service providers to embed MiniTool software with their own products to add value to their products or services and expand their market.
Windows 11 audio driver or Windows 11 sound driver is a type of computer hardware/firmware driver necessary for audio devices to work properly in the Win11 operating system. Only with those drivers, can you hear sound from your PC.
The latest Realtek audio driver windows 11 for Intel was released on January 11, 2022. Its version is 6.0.9285.1. This Intel Realtek HD audio driver for Windows 11 is for a 3.5mm audio jack and can be installed on the 11th generation Intel NUC11PHKi7C and NUC11PHKi7CAA. Its size is 378.6 MB.
If you find it complex or confusing to manually download Windows 11 sound driver, you can rely on a professional 3rd party program to do that. For example, you may find it time-consuming to find out your motherboard type and suitable audio driver. Even if you get to know what which driver you need, you may fall into a situation to be confused that which version or edition of the driver is the correct one.
The new and powerful Windows 11 will bring you many benefits. At the same time, it will also bring you some unexpected damages such as data loss. Thus, it is strongly recommended that you back up your crucial files before or after upgrading to Win11 with a robust and reliable program like MiniTool ShadowMaker, which will assist you to protect your increasing data automatically on schedules!
The Windows 10 audio subsystem uses an algorithm with enhanced heuristics for default audio endpoint selection. This topic describes these heuristics and how the Windows 10 audio subsystem uses them to select the default audio endpoint. For you to best understand the new Windows 10 selection mechanism, this topic also explains how default audio endpoint selection occurs in Windows 7. The target audience of this topic is OEMs and IHVs.
Most PC audio devices contain multiple logically independent audio features. In Windows 7 and Windows 10 each feature is exposed as a separate audio endpoint. Endpoints are listed in the Control Panel Sound application, as shown in the following example dialog box from Windows 7.
Only one audio endpoint at a time can be set as the default for a specific console or communications role. However, starting in Windows 10 there is the option to target a different endpoint for these roles to different applications using the App volume and device preferences page.
The Windows 7 and Windows 10 audio subsystems use similar algorithms to determine the default audio endpoint when no user preference has been specified. However, the Windows 10 algorithm is different from Windows 7 in the way that it handles user selection of the default and that it handles a per-application preference.
This topic describes how the default audio endpoint is selected in Windows 10. For a better understanding of what is new to Windows 10, default audio endpoint selection in Windows 7 is also explained.
There are four endpoint states: ACTIVE, UNPLUGGED, DISABLED, and NOT PRESENT, that are defined in DEVICE_STATE_XXX Constants. The audio subsystem considers only ACTIVE endpoints (in the present and enabled state) when it determines the default audio endpoint. Any events that cause an endpoint's state to change from or to the ACTIVE state can potentially affect the current default audio endpoint. Such events include inserting an audio device, unplugging a device, and installing a new audio device. In response to such operations, the Windows audio subsystem runs the default audio endpoint heuristic algorithm to determine the new default audio endpoint.
The endpoint timestamp property is a property key containing the system time. In Windows 7, an endpoint's timestamp property is created or updated when it is set as the default audio endpoint through the Control Panel Sound application.
A timestamp property is associated to each role, and the timestamp property is used by the default selection algorithm to identify which endpoints have been set as the preferred default by the user for that role. The algorithm will identify the endpoint with the newest timestamp property as the default endpoint.
The timestamp property that was used in Windows 7 for the user default preference did not allow for automatic selection of a newly attached device after the initial default selection. For example, if a user set the internal speaker as the default endpoint at any time in the past and later attached new USB headphones, the system would never move to the USB headphones without a manual selection.
Starting in Windows 10, user default selection is built as a tree-like structure of past preferences which considers what endpoints were available at the time of the default selection done by the user. The reason for this is that when a user selects a default endpoint, they are communicating their preference for that endpoint relative to what other endpoints were active at the time of the selection. The user is not communicating an absolute preference for the selected device forever and in all situations.
Use and creation of the Timestamp Property has been removed from Windows 10, replaced by the Level property. The level property is used to build the tree-like structure of user preferences. Like the timestamp property, there is a level property associated to each role. The level property is created or updated any time the user selects a default endpoint though the sound control panel, the sound settings page, or the audio control in the system tray.
When an endpoint is selected as a default, that endpoint is moved to the top of the tree-like structure by assigning it the highest available level. The next level down in the tree would contain one or more endpoints which either have been selected in the past as a default, or were active at the time of this selection but have never been selected by the user. Each subsequent selection brings the desired endpoint to the top of the list, moving prior selections down and grouping active, but as yet unselected, endpoints together to create tie conditions. In the event that all endpoints in the system are set as a default, the resulting structure becomes a simple ordered list with one endpoint at each level.
First, active endpoints without a level value are rank compared, with the endpoint with the highest rank selected to be default. This way endpoints which have been recently added are given a first opportunity to be the default because they are the newest in the system and connected after the user selected the previous default.
Next, if all active endpoints contain a level, then the endpoint with the highest level, without a tie, is chosen as the default. Having the highest level indicates that at some point in the past the user has set this endpoint as the default while the other endpoints, with a lower level value, were active.
Finally, if all endpoints contain a level value, and the endpoints with the highest level values are all tied, the endpoint rank is then used to break the tie. This indicates that these endpoints were active at the time of a default selection, but were not themselves selected. We have no indication of user preference between these endpoints, so the automated ranking system is used.
It is worth noting that with this new algorithm, a "new" endpoint is given increased weighting for becoming the default. This means that driver behavior that causes an audio endpoint to appear new to a system has the potential to trigger a default change.
Examples of driver behaviors and events which result in a loss of user settings on audio endpoints and will make an audio endpoint appear "new" to the system, potentially triggering a change in the default device, are:
The Windows 10 default audio endpoint heuristic for automatic endpoint selection is the same as the Windows 7 heuristic, with some minor modifications to the factor weightings to give a better user experience.
The default selection heuristic starts by collecting information about the audio endpoint; the factors. Each factor is then weighted and the resulting weighted values for all the factors are summed. The resulting sum is called the endpoint rank. A rank value is calculated for each role for each endpoint (console and communications).
Windows 10 defines a set of enum values for every supported endpoint factor and stores them in the registry. Detailed descriptions of these factors and their corresponding enumerant value sets follow.
An endpoint with this capability implies that audio drivers can notify the audio subsystem when the audio peripheral device that is connected to an endpoint is plugged in or unplugged. Audio endpoints that support jack detection capability are called dynamic endpoints, and those that do not provide this support are called static endpoints. To support jack detection capability, audio device drivers must support the KSPROPERTY_JACK_DESCRIPTION2 property. For more information about this property, see KSPROPERTY_JACK_DESCRIPTION2.
An audio endpoint's form factor indicates the physical attributes of the audio endpoint with which the user interacts, such as headphones, speakers, or S/PDIF. To determine an endpoint's form factor, the audio subsystem uses built-in fixed logic to map the Kernel Streaming (KS) pin's category (KSNodeType), which is exposed by the audio driver, to a specific form factor. For more information, see EndpointFormFactor.
The audio driver selects the KSNodeType for a KS pin on an endpoint because the driver has detailed knowledge about the audio device that might be connected to an audio jack. Therefore, KsNodeType reveals more specific knowledge on the endpoint than its form factor does.
The audio subsystem favors endpoints on a certain bus type over other bus types when all other endpoint characteristics are identical. For example, the system gives Bluetooth headphones priority over on-board HD Audio headphones to provide a better communications experience for the user; that is, when an end-user introduces a Bluetooth headphone device to this PC, the system makes it the default device.
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