Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 Mainboard -- Issue with the onboard audio

[Stu_UK]

In late December/early January I assembled a new PC of above average spec and despite some very minor niggles I am for all intents and purposes a satisfied customer. The mainboard for this new build is a Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 – Rev 1.1 on which it’s audio components are supplied and run by Realtek. Broadly speaking this new PC is a dream to use, but four months in I find myself becoming more and more needy for a solution to an issue that has been present with the system’s audio since the first time I switched the machine on.

The problem is that whatever it is I'm running, the audio for any application or file is absolutely gutless and lacking in any warmth whatsoever, simply because all the bass content of the sound is not coming from the subwoofer but is in fact sharing the front-right channel. I have attempted to correct the issue by adjusting equaliser settings, installing and running some software which claims to be able to manipulate the audio (not that it did in the way I wanted it to!), I’ve tried reallocating jack plug positions (using Realtek's own audio utility) and I have of course tried reinstalling the drivers but still the problem persists. I even attempted to plug the sub into the front-right channel's jack point which gave me all the bass I could ever want but of course all the higher frequency stuff (which is supposed to go through the front-right speaker) was passed through there as well making for a situation that was just as bad if not worse.

I can confirm that the machine is currently running the most up to date Realtek drivers (R3.75 -- Audio Driver Version: 6.0.1.7037 -- Audio Codec: ALC898) available for download offered by the Gigabyte website. I can confirm that the speaker configuration has been correctly set to reflect the fact that I am running a 5.1 setup (see pic attached) and that Realtek's sanity check utility confirms that the machine knows what each of these speakers are (including the subwoofer). I can also confirm that despite this persistent fine tuning issue the machine does still output audio, be it for my movies, my music and my games (thank Christ!) or I wouldn't have been able to put up with this situation for a day, let alone four months!

One more observation that will really screw up this diagnosis: I use VLC player, QuickTime, Windows Media, iTunes, PowerDVD, not to mention my games... All of these softwares output this gutless sounding audio; YouTube however plays absolutely fine! – On YouTube the bass content is powerfully present and coming through the sub, I mean wtf!! ()

I have sent Gigabyte a webmail (14th April) using their own technical support system, requesting their assistance on this issue but they have yet to get back to me; I cattle prodded them again yesterday and still nothing! I e-mailed technical support at Realtek (15th April) and I'm getting no response from them either! - Just where the hell is the support? Is there a consensus between these manufacturers' to not give a s***??
I would really appreciate it if anyone around the forum could get back to me with a solution (or two!). The PC is running Windows 7 professional (64-Bit).

Thanks in advance.

[shadowsports]

Stu,
My Asus board has the same chip, pretty sure.  You've probably missed a setting somewhere.  I'm using optical out to a Cambridge Soundworks amp.  I see you are using speakers, but you haven't told us what kind?  Sub and center get connected to Orange port.  Rear pair Black.  Fronts to Lime.  You don't have side speakers, that's only 7.1.  When you make changes, make one at a time and test results. Stay away from the Room Correction Tab until you have things working.   

[Stu_UK]

Shadowsports! - Thank you so much for posting a reply, I really appreciate the input.

Okay... I've just fired up the Realtek audio manager and looked over the port assignments where I can confirm that my front speakers are assigned to my lime port, my centre and my sub are assigned to my orange port and as for my rears? - When I assign my black port to output through my rear speakers the checkbox for the 'Rear Pair' (on the audio manager) remains greyed out and won't even let me check the box (the box for the 'Side Pair' checkbox remains checkable!(??)); under this setup when I run the sanity check in the audio manager the fronts, centre and the sub all return the tones correctly but of course the rears do not.

I ran a video using VLC Player just to see how that stood with the new configuration and that was as it has always been: No output through the sub at all and all the bass content sharing the front-right channel.

Now for some more weirdness:
I managed to get the 'Rear Pair' checkbox checkable again but only if I set my Speaker Configuration to 7.1. I put a check in the checkbox to 'Rear Pair', dechecked the 'Side Pair', reassigned my black port for the rear speakers and ran the sanity check: Once again the sanity check indicates that the PC knows what each speaker is and where in the room they are. I fired up VLC Player, ran some random video and... Still no bass from the sub. One change of note is that the bass content of the sound now appears to share the centre-channel whereas before it was sharing the front-right channel; play through the same video on YouTube however and everything outputs exactly as it should be with as much bass pumping out the sub as I could want!

So the situation with my audio though a little different is broadly the same.

Referring to the screen dump of the Realtek Audio Manager utility you posted: I couldn't help but notice that you appear to have a lot more tabs and checkboxes than I do. I have no sound effects tab, no room correction tab, no DTS UltraPC tab, no Digital Output (Optical) tab (although that could be down to the fact I'm not using that port) and more importantly... No speaker fill checkbox, No Swap Centre/Subwoofer Output checkbox (which I'd really really like to try right now!) and no Enable Bass Management checkbox. What version of the Realtek Audio Manager suite are you running?

And just to get it out there, my speakers are far from special by a manufacturer that I've never even heard of (Ozaki) but they were cheap and they've been more than adequate for my needs for more than say six years and ran on my last PC just fine (SEE Link: http://www.computerempire.co.uk/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=12&ccSID=062e02d2844cfeaa1fe7012a90cce6d3)

Apologies for this being so wordy; I find it tricky explaining this stuff in note form.
Again, thanks for replying to this thread.

[shadowsports]

Stu,
Both your chip and software is newer than mine.  Mine functions identically. 

6.0.1.6251 > Chip ALC889

What kind of audio connector does your case have.  AC'97 or true HD?

If your case has old school 'AC97 front panel connector and you try to run HD Audio setting your audio port mapping might not work as expected.  An incorrect setting should only affect FP audio, but I'm new to gigabyte and manufacturers have done weirder things. So double check that.   

Whats going on in Control Panel > Sounds?



The ports for your connections (where populated) should display with up arrows.  Green Check on Speakers as Default.

The auto sensing feature should detect when you plug in a device.  If it doesn't, you should recheck port assignments.  I'd set those back to default.

This caught my eye, page 29 of your manual.
***
The front panel audio header supports HD audio by default. If your chassis provides an AC'97 ••front panel audio module, refer to the instructions on how to activate AC'97 functionality via the audio software in Chapter 5, "Configuring 2/4/5.1/7.1-Channel Audio."

Whoa!  Ok Review section 5-2 Configuring Audio Input and Output.  Starts on Page 98.  Port re-tasking and Side Speakers for 5.1.  Mine is slightly different (actually rears).  You will find that your software supports all of the features I have (like room correction) once properly configured. 

5.1-channel audio: Front speaker out, Side speaker out, and Center/Subwoofer speaker out.  Review page 99, items C & D.  I strongly suspect this will be where you find the culprit for your woes.  You will also see how to enable the other features you thought were missing. 

[Stu_UK]

Hi Shadowsports,

Thank you for spending yet more of your time considering my audio issues (and checking out my board's manual no less!).

It's been a while since I was last routing around the inside of my case so I couldn't remember off the cuff whether or not the audio connector inside my PC was an HD one or an AC'97. I can confirm that it is an HD connector and that the case's manufacturer (Zalman (Z9U3 Midi)) had bothered to tie all the relevant leads in to a nice single connector plug so that was a no brainer during installation.

In reference to Windows Sounds in Control Panel, I didn't quite get what you meant by an up arrow to indicate what the port assignments were. Know however that when I run through the speaker configuration facility (sanity checker), it too indicates that it knows where all of my speakers are and what role in the 5.1 setup they each play (just like the Realtek HD Audio Manager) suggesting to me that port reassignment is unnecessary.

And the Gigabyte manual for my mainboard: I was aware of the port reassignments facility in the Realtek Audio Manager utility, indeed I used them to tell the side pair speakers to act as the rear pair (7.1 configuration) and vice versa (for the 5.1 configuration). It's a convenient feature of the software for those that can't be bothered to plug their speakers in the correct port in the first place but that wasn't a problem here.

Having reviewed the sound pages of the Gigabyte manual this morning I couldn't help but notice that the included screen dumps of the Realtek HD Audio Manager utility included the tabs for sound effects and room correction. I then got to thinking that maybe those stills represent the version of the software that was included with the motherboard's CD-ROM which unsurprisingly is a little older than the up to date one I downloaded from the Gigabyte website during my initial build. So I reinstalled the drivers to some earlier ones and I'm sorry to report that you'd never know the difference and that my quirks with my audio (including my missing tabs in the manager) remained the same, indeed I'm not even in any rush to restore the more up to date ones!

Page 99, Sections C & D - Yeah I had already gone over those during my initial hours of problem solving just to confirm that nothing was obstructing the operation of that back panel. 'Unfortunately' that was all good.

And in other news: Gigabyte Technical Support got back to me with a suggestion: They suggested that I flash the BIOS up to F20 (I'm currently on F16) which in all honesty was something I wanted to avoid but I'll probably cave in on that just out of curiosity. I've already been to the Gigabyte website and all that BIOS update is supposed to do is enable support for the Xeon E5 series CPU; they mention nothing about correcting any issues reported with the onboard sound.
If applying the update makes my situation worse I really will go nuclear!

So... watch this space! I'll let all the forums that I've spilled this issue to know one way or the other. Still if you have any flashes of inspiration regarding this itch, please let me know.

Cheers!!

[dmdilks]

Just asking did you double check the back of the subwoofer to make sure that everything is connected right. Because I have the same setup but with another brand of speakers.

[Stu_UK]

Hi dmdilks!

Yes, I can confirm that the sub is connected correctly. The sanity checker in the Realtek Audio Manager confirms that the PC knows what each of my speakers are and where they are located and that includes the sub.
I can't tell you how irritated it makes me feel (although you'd have every right to call it jealousy! - Because that would be true too!!) to learn that you are running the same setup as I and yet your Realtek Audio Manager provides you with the additional tabs and check boxes that are sadly absent from mine.

What release/version of the Realtek audio drivers are you using? What operating system are you running??
Oh and what version of the BIOS are you running? - Mine was flashed to F16 at purchase.

[absic]

Just to throw my hat into the ring on this subject. Have you tried running audio without the Realtek drivers and instead used the standard ones that come with Windows?

I learnt ages ago never to bother with Realtek drivers as they caused more trouble than they were worth and now set up my 5.1 system (when I run Windows) just using the basic setup facility in Sound manager and have no problems at all. This is on Windows 7, Windows 8 & also 8.1.

Now, getting 5.1 to work on my Hackintosh is a completely different ball game.

[shadowsports]

Stu,
I think the drivers and version you have installed are fine.  Can you test with other speakers?  There is no reason based on what your doing that you shouldn't have all of the features, unless, something is not configured properly, or the Realtek drivers don't like something about your device. 

[dmdilks]

My driver is 1/07/2012 I don't update anything and that driver maybe from the MB disk. My bios is F16

Go into control panel and click on sounds and check in there if it is setup the same way and test it. It might take some time before that screen pops up.

[Stu_UK]

Hi dmdilks,

I have indeed attempted to configure the speakers using the Windows Sounds environment before. Like the Realtek HD Audio Manager, Windows Sounds confirmed that the PC was aware of my 5.1 setup as well as what role each one of my speakers played in that setup (including the sub!). From the software's point of view everything works exactly as it should; in practice the audio performance of the PC suggests that it hasn't a clue about the existence of the subwoofer, instead sending that bass content to the front-right channel.

Stu,
I think the drivers and version you have installed are fine.  Can you test with other speakers?  There is no reason based on what your doing that you shouldn't have all of the features, unless, something is not configured properly, or the Realtek drivers don't like something about your device. 

Hi shadowsports,

Unfortunately short of purchasing a new suite of speakers, I'm not likely to get the opportunity to test your suggestion; I don't even know anyone with a 5.1 setup attached to their PC. The thing of it is, my speakers are pretty basic, I'd be surprised if there's even a single machine on this planet that couldn't make decent use of them let alone one the runs a mainboard that costs around £150.
However I have just been exposed to a minor revelation which may help us all redefine what we think the issue is...

Just to throw my hat into the ring on this subject. Have you tried running audio without the Realtek drivers and instead used the standard ones that come with Windows?

I learnt ages ago never to bother with Realtek drivers as they caused more trouble than they were worth and now set up my 5.1 system (when I run Windows) just using the basic setup facility in Sound manager and have no problems at all. This is on Windows 7, Windows 8 & also 8.1.

Now, getting 5.1 to work on my Hackintosh is a completely different ball game.

Hi absic,

Guess what? - BINGO!!! 

I've just uninstalled the Realtek drivers (again) and configured the PC to run the audio using the Windows Sound manager. The sound manager allowed me to manipulate all the aspects of the sound that were apparently missing on my Realtek manager like say the Bass Management. The sanity check confirmed that all was good (didn't celebrate at that point!); I then made a bee line for one of the videos shortcut to VLC Player and then BOOM - VLC Player was making use of the sub for the very first time since this work of art PC of mine was born in to existence.- A beautiful moment to be sure!

In all seriousness, whilst I am overjoyed that this issue has just reached a significant milestone on it's path to being resolved, I'll never be 100% satisfied until my machine is running Realtek drivers and software robust enough to do the job that the Windows generic drivers seem to be doing  (albeit without some bells and whistles). As it stands it would appear that absent the Realtek HD Audio Manager, my PC refuses to load the Dolby Surround software environment (that came with the mainboard's drivers/utility disc) which bugs me somewhat.
Truth is, I have expended a lot of effort in to the planning and execution of this build; this IS my dream machine with premium components supplied by supposedly reputable manufacturers; cost was a secondary consideration (can you say, £1600 on all that makes up the tower?) - This is not some half-hearted effort, not by a long shot. Can you believe that I was seriously considering the purchase of a Creative Labs external (USB) 5.1 sound card? And that today I received confirmation from Amazon that my PCI riser cable has been dispatched so that if all else fails, I now have the option to apply this absurd workaround using a Creative Labs Audigy PCI card (from my prior build) that I currently have shelved! Again, this is my dream machine for crying out loud; In my opinion such contingency planning is far from acceptable and at the risk of sounding a little up my own ass: I deserve perfection out of this build!

Apologies if that came across as a bit ranty; It's probably the frustration talking!

To all who have contributed to the ideas bin throughout this thread, let me once again express my most sincerest thanks. I appreciate that this sort of back and forth costs you all a lot of time and effort. I still have Gigabyte e-support looking into the issue for me; if they can progress some positive action beyond the suggestion that I update my BIOS I'll be sure to let you know.

[dmdilks]

As it stands it would appear that absent the Realtek HD Audio Manager, my PC refuses to load the Dolby Surround software environment (that came with the board's driver disc) which bugs me somewhat. 

I'm with another forum Abithelp.com and there was some one had about the same problem on a AMD board. What he did was drivers from another board.

[absic]

Hi Stu,

I understand your frustration over this particular issue but, at least now you know, it is not a basic hardware fault with your speakers and that the Realtek chip is functioning. There maybe an underlying issue caused by BIOS which is why Gigabyte advised you to update to the latest BIOS version and, if nothing else, it is worth trying (if you want to pursue this to its bitter end) just to eliminate this aspect as a possible cause for the software not functioning the way it should.

It is annoying, when you purchase something and things don't work as you had hoped or expected but I learnt a long time and a lot of money ago, that this seems to be part and parcel of PC building. My advice, for what it's worth, is don't get too hung up on things like this or you will find yourself spending more time trying to resolve the issue rather than using your PC.

[Stu_UK]

My advice, for what it's worth, is don't get too hung up on things like this or you will find yourself spending more time trying to resolve the issue rather than using your PC.

I agree completely... But home computing has been a hobby of mine for about 15 years (across four seperate builds) so I'm clearly prepared to spend a little more time than the average Joe on righting these sorts of issues, all in the pursuit of an optimal running system.

One rule of thumb that I have learned along the way is that you shouldn't be in too much of a hurry to impliment the BIOS updates unless there is something seriously wrong with your system or if the hardware you want to use can only be supported by such an update. I am really quite hesitant to impliment a BIOS update for fear of initiating the quite dire consequences of screwing something up that isn't actually broken! (like say the integrity of my two RAID-0 arrays or my SSD being bootable or the support for my Ivy Bridge-E processor or my 2400MHz DDR3 memory profile). Case in point: I'm running version F16 of the BIOS as it's the only way for this mainboard to support my processor (Core i7-4820K) but there's no getting away from the fact that it sentenced the 3D-BIOS to death and that was all before I had even received the board from my retailer. Now I'd liked to have met the 3D-BIOS myself but if I have to drop this processor to do it? - Forget it, I'll do just fine without it.
Of course I have visited Gigabyte's download page for version F20 of the BIOS and the only benefit that they have listed is that my mainboard would then be able to support the Xeon E5 series CPU; should I really care about that? I specifically asked Gigabyte eSupport for a more detailed overview of F20 of the BIOS, specifically on how it could fix my onboard audio but they've evaded the question.

I'm afraid that without this information I seriously doubt that I will risk it because if it causes a stink it might end up costing me more time than the average Stu trying to correct it and that's more time than I'm prepared to spend fixing the thing when I should be using it.
Also as you have said (and the conclusion I drew for myself) the fact that the Windows generic drivers run the 5.1 setup suggests that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the hardware so without more information I'm a little vague as to why updating the BIOS would improve the situation.

This whole mess smells like an issue with the Realtek drivers and/or software to me. In my opinion Gigabyte should be dropping in on their supplier and insisting that they issue an update that can address this problem.

[dmdilks]

The thing is yes you really shouldn't update things unless you are having a problem. The whole thing on this is it really Realtek, Gigabyte, hareware or software.

I'm running the same board and not having a problem. This you will find some of the time that any two boards might run different to each other. That is why we do have updates.

But I would look at Realtek on this one. Other people have had problems just like yours. Plus I'm going to PM the guy over on Abithelp to ask about that thread.

All I can remember is that he used older driver from another mother board company.