Nvidia High Definition Audio Or Realtek
Brandi Baylon
My Dell XPS 8940 has an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 card. For sound and my jack mic, I've been using the originally installed Realtek audio driver with Altec Lansing external speakers since I bought the XPS in April 2022. Sound quality was excellent. This morning, Windows did an automatic update of the Nvidia High Definition Audio driver (dated 1/19/23), which ruined the sound quality. For example, conversation in videos was garbled and mostly muted, and music MP3s sounded off, with the singing also badly muted, relative to the instruments. I checked the Settings > System > Sound and didn't find anything to adjust that might fix it.
So I went directly to the Nvidia site, where I downloaded and installed the latest driver (3/16/23) for the GeForce 3070, hoping that might fix the problem. It did not. Instead, it switched my audio to the Nvidia High Definition Audio, removed my Realtek, speakers, and jack mic from Settings > System > Sound, and also removed all three from the Device Manager. When I looked on C:, I found that NVIDIA had in fact uninstalled the Realtek driver completely. My sound was now coming exclusively through the horrible tinny speakers on my Dell 27" monitor, although at least it didn't sound muted or garbled (i.e., it sounded normal, just bad because the monitor speakers are bad).
To fix that new problem, I found the Realtek driver on the Dell site and reinstalled it. I was able to switch the sound and the mic back to Realtek and the jack mic in Settings > System > Sound and thus get sound through my speakers again, but the original sound problem came back. I tried turning "Audio Enhancements" on and off, which didn't help. I went into "More sound settings" and disabled all the NVIDIA High Definition Audio items, which also didn't help. My driver reinstall did not include the Realtek HD Audio Manager, which may or may not have been on my XPS before. I saw it mentioned on several tech support sites as a way to adjust the audio, but no one had a legitimate (i.e., not possibly sketchy) download link for it. Realtek does not appear to have current downloads on their own site any more. I tried the Windows troubleshooter, but it had no suggestions beyond turning "Audio Enhancements" on or off, which I'd already tried. I'm baffled.
Something else causing the messed up sound. When integrated audio (Realtek) is enabled, Windows will always reinstall the driver, no matter what. So, for the Realtek part, just uninstall the current driver from Device Manager, reboot the machine and give a few minutes for reinstallation of driver. After proper installation, a popup from bottom right screen asking you to select and confirm sound settings, there are 2 choices, nVidia and Realtek, obviously, select the Realtek. All your previous connections should work again.
If you suspected the nVidia audio driver was the cause, go to Device Manager, select nVidia high definition audio => properties => driver => roll back driver. That should restore nvidia to previous (working) driver.
After I updated the GeForce driver, Realtek was not enabled, because NVIDIA had completely removed it from the settings, the device manager, and my C: drive. So Windows was not going to reinstall it. And it was much longer than a few minutes before I reinstalled it myself, and during that time Windows never tried. As I noted above, I've reinstalled Realtek and selected it for output with my speakers, and the sound problem persists. Uninstalling and reinstalling it again seems superfluous.
The first NVIDIA update clearly did something to my system, because the sound was good before and bad after. I just don't know what it did. The problem persists even when I disable the NVIDIA audio drivers.
As luck would have it, I have the MaxxAudio Pro already. After some plugging and unplugging and then shutting down last night and restarting this morning, things seem to be working correctly. Still kind of baffling, but hopefully the problem is fixed. Until the next NVIDIA update, I guess. And I still find it astonishing that they have the audacity not only to switch users' defaults without asking but also to uninstall a competing driver.
I'm using 355.98 display driver and as that seemed to be the most recommended. I modified the inf for the 980ti and it installed fine. My problem is I don't have audio and it won't let me choose Nvidia high definition audio as my audio device even though it is visible in device manager and says it has no issues it's not selectable. Also Nvidia control manager should have a tab to select digital audio it's not visible either. I think the issue is the connector type listed in Nvidia control panel is dvi. I think since it thinks it's a dvi connection it's not looking for any of the audio stuff because that connector doesn't carry audio. I've seen other people have the option to change this with a drop down but mine doesn't let me it's locked to dvi. Also I'm trying to get ultra widescreen support through custom resolutions but can only get it to pan and scan instead of using my entire monitor (Alienware qd OLED 34") .
Don't use HDMI on XP with the 980. Use DVI to DVI or DP to DP.
If you insist on HDMI then IIRC max is 1920x1080 @60hz , anything past that results in the issue you mentioned and I believe a color range issue.
You also won't have working scaling.....
If you want HDMI then you'll need to use an earlier nvidia card.
Don't use HDMI on XP with the 980. Use DVI or displayport.
If you insist on HDMI then IIRC max is 1920x1080 @60hz , anything past that results in the issue you mentioned and I believe a color issue.
You always won't have working scaling.....
If you want HDMI then you'll need to use an earlier nvidia card.
Thanks for the input I believe your posts about 355.98 driver are what led me to that driver so I appreciate the knowledge. I'm willing to settle for 1920x1080 as my monitor only has one display port and it's occupied by my modern machine. I don't want to have to swap cables each time. All that's available is HDMI any idea how to change the connection type or is that only on older drivers that the 980ti doesn't support?
So the Nvidia drivers have the ability to switch HDMI to DVI mode for those monitors that would otherwise report as a TV likely due to the extra extensions like the ability for the monitor to support audio, so it's a good thing that HDMI reports as DVI otherwise the monitor would show up as a TV. For audio you'll have to use a sound card.
You could use a two or three port displayport switch but everytime I've used them I've had nothing but issues. Every time I'd get it working perfect then randomly out of the blue there would be issues and it always came down to the switch being the issue.
It's possible HDMI may suit your purposes for your newer machine though but if you need gsync\freesync or high refresh rates it may not. IMO, for the Nvidia 900 series on XP a monitor that doesn't support higher refresh rates that XP (video driver) cannot support is preferred since you end up having to use refreshlock anyway (which isn't that big of a deal) but really a dedicated monitor that is within the HBR1 limit that XP supports is ideal.
All my tests were in situations where the Nvidia driver treats an HDMI as HDMI and not HDMI as DVI. (Except where I was able to use an EDID device to treat HDMI as DVI but I can't remember every possible variation. Issue there is the EDID devices mostly flaked out when using converters so could never get reliable results.
The issues and limitations experienced are due to a buggy nvidia driver and not the card, cables or monitors (except in cases where those are a factor).
Example:
You can do displayport to HDMI but it would show as a HDMI connection since it would be an HDMI connection.
You can do HDMI to HDMI to DVI which would show as a DVI connection with scaling (not in your case since you don't have DVI)
You can do DVI to HDMI to HDMI which would show as a HDMI connection with the limitations mentioned above.
If you use a displayport to HDMI cable then it will be detected as HDMI (or in your case due to the nvidia driver possibly DVI) because it would be HDMI or DVI.
DVI doesn't support audio and if it detects it as HDMI you'll have the limitations mentioned above for HDMI due to the buggy nvidia driver.
It's a situation where I'd really like to be able to switch between my 3 desktops by changing inputs on my monitor only. My monitor has no audio in only line out going to my speakers. The only way to use my monitor as I'd like is to have all the audio sources come in to the monitor via displayport or HDMI. My use case is VHS capture I have one XP PC dedicated to capture and one XP PC dedicated to editing. I know it's weird but you have to do it that way.
One is a PC with nothing except what's needed for capture as almost any other driver will break ati aiw capture cards theatre 200 driver. It has conflicts with everything. That PC works beautiful with a vga to HDMI cable that actually integrates a 3.5mm jack into the hdmi.
I put together the PC that has no audio as the fastest XP PC I could make. 980ti, 4960x, Asus rampage iv black edition motherboard, 2tb SSD as for the editing portion the software requires XP but the faster the better for encoding. The PC works great just no audio.
These are my use cases. My issue seems to be beyond simply not looking for audio though. I hooked it up DP to DP just to see if the audio would work and it still doesn't. It's recognized as a DP connection and in the Nvidia control panel tree I get the set up digital audio tab. However, I can't connect to Nvidia high definition audio even tho it's listed in device manager. It simply is not a selectable audio device in the sounds tab. Realtek hd audio is my only option and it has no audio same as before.
Can anyone confirm they have ever got a 980ti to output audio to XP through HDMI or Displayport at all? If so what was the driver? I don't really care about maximizing the ultra widescreen or scaling at this point.