Z170Z Gaming 7 Audio Problem

[ZedZedski]

Asus Maximus VIII is a very good motherboard, but terrible for audio. Asus forums are really full of complaints about it because it emits pops and clicks now and then, so consider yourself a lucky boy if yours does not exhibit this issue, ZedZedski

I think MSI is the safest solution for Z170, at the moment: that's at least what I'm suggesting to friends of mine, lastly. It's a pity, because on the paper Gigabyte's motherboards are superior both to Asus and MSI. If it weren't for this terrible audio implementation...

(Oh, incidentally, it's true that the mouse in BIOS, on Gaming 7, is laggy, but only if you don't update the BIOS to latest release).

That said, I'm on my 18th day without no more a single problem with the audio on the Gaming 7 (*crossing fingers*). What did I change, you ask? Simple: I disabled ALL the Windows enhancements AND ALL the audio enhancements in Creative panel too, both for playing and recording (including Crystal Voice, alas).

Sure, audio quality is worse than with the enhancements on, but still good for my 2.1 speakers and my HyperCloudX headphones.

If it'll continue working fine in the future days, it means that the audio problem resides certainly in drivers (poorly coded by Gigabyte crew) and is not hardware-related.

Audio is superb on Maximus Viii Hero. If you read my comment then you will notice what I said, that it is even better in real world rather than it was for Gaming 7. Trust me, I had that motherboatd long enough Septembe 6, 2015 till March 26, 2016 to be more precise.
I tried everything, including what you did and the problem persistet. Sometimes, I had a luck and would not have the audio problem for weeks but sometimes it was day after a day and sometimes multiple times per day. Mostly would crash in games and Skype. Oh and the sound was horrible while playing StarWars Battlefront. Now with ASUS I can fully enjoy that game with much better audio quality.
As for laggy mouse. I've been updating Bios ever since I got that motherboard. I kept BIOS and drivers up to date in hopes that the issue will be gone.
As for ticking sounds about Audio on Maximus Viii you saw on the forum, you should do more research. That ticking sound is when you power on and power off the system. It does that because there is a protective relay that does not screw up the ampliphier. Something, that perhaps Gigabyte should have done on their boards.
Moreover thet quality build is so much better on ASUS board.
There are more problems that Gigabyte had, especially software related. However, some of it was more or less fixed with newer updates but yet still had a lot of bugs. I'm referring to the utilities.
Furthermore, Gigabyte Gaming 7 has issues with memory and CPU overclocking. Even if you use XMP profiles etc. From time to time BIOS would crash for no reason. Also, overclocking system sux on Gigabyte. I had no problems overclocking ASUS board. The system is so much more advanced on ASUS and BIOS is so much more better on ASUS, especially no more laggy mouse. Also, ASUS BIOS has way more overclock options. No wonder it is the most award winning overclocker currently on the market.
I wish you all the good luck with this Gaming 7 board, as I had the most annoying 6 month.

[dmdilks]

You know that you might not like what I'm going to say here. But lets look at the true of the matter. You know that it is only windows 10 that is having the problem. Is there any body running windows 7 or 8 that is having a problem. If it was hardware problem it would be across the board with all OS.

Plus somebody said that Gigabyte should fix the drivers for this. All Gigabyte does is uses the chip-set from those companies and they drivers. Plus yes it says 01/07/0216 but it is the same driver that was release by Creative in Aug 2015.

They are still using the windows 7 driver and calling it windows 10. This is from Gigabytes site. If you look at 7 or 8 or 10 it is the same driver.

Creative Audio driver
OS:Windows 7 32bit,Windows 7 64bit,
Windows 8.1 32bit,Windows 8.1 64bit,   -   RC2   101.95 MB   2016/01/07
Windows 10 32bit,Windows 10 64bit

I'm sorry guys till Creative really makes a stand alone driver for windows 10 you will have problems. Plus that is why I got away from them years ago because of their poor support for new OS they did the same thing on windows 7 when it came out.

[slippers4t]

I also am experiencing this problem though on slightly different hardware.

I have a GA Z170X-UD5 TH with Realtek on-board premium audio. I installed the drivers Gigabyte provide from their website (not generic Realtek audio) and the audio level is really high.

Currently I have the volume set at 10%, my old system which had a Xonar sound card the audio level was at 65% for comfortable listening with the same headphones. Quality wise it's on par with the Xonar but the loudness is grating to say the least, even some games I have turn down their volume even further.

I suspect it is a deliberate thing, the audio level is being amplified in the driver, they have their own internal level and it is turned up to the max. Similar to media players with an gain/amplification/normalize setting.

I saw this many years ago with Asus/MSI on board audio which is why I went looking for a dedicated sound card in the first place, some did the same thing like Creative with their external cards.

The only ones I found which didn't were the Xonar line, so my advice is consider getting any card compatible with the UNi Xonar driver package, do not use the stock supplied drivers, install the UNi package in minimalist mode and that solves the problem.

Not happy about that solution myself as my xonar is PCI so I have to go buy a new PCI-e one.

It's not a Windows 10 issue Google search Realtek audio too loud and you will find results going back over a decade. If by chance any one from Gigabyte is reading this send a note to Realtek or any of your own engineers and get them to tweak the driver so it drops the audio levels.


Edit: Having not had to deal with this problem over the past several years I have looked around for any fixes and sort of found one, it's called Equalizer APO an application that can modify the amplification gain setting.

Install the app and select the output in use then reboot PC, run the app and you will see 1:pre-amplification area with a "gain" -dB value, change this value to -25.00dB and that will counter act the too loud volume, I have it currently at 64% and it is tolerable (prior to this anything above 10 was painful).

Only change via text because the GUI slider only goes as low as -20.00dB which is not enough. This proves in my mind at least the fault is in the drivers, they have the volume gain cranked to the max because some people complain about too low volume but they don't provide any setting in their own control panel to adjust it for those with sensitive ears. Realtek have their own "normalization" feature in the settings but you can tell something is wrong as you can hear line noise and hissing with it enabled, it's being pushed too far on top of the driver amp.

[ZedZedski]

You know that it is only windows 10 that is having the problem. Is there any body running windows 7 or 8 that is having a problem. If it was hardware problem it would be across the board with all OS.

I experienced same issue in Windows 8.1 since day one when I first assembled PC.
I don't think it is the OS issue.

[Saruman]

Yes, you can find the same problems with 7 and 8/8.1 on Youtube. I agree, though, that the problem seems not to be hardware, because on GNU/Linux I never had it, so it seems to me that drivers are the culprit.

About the fact that Creative should do something, well, that's not true: agreements at hands, when a motherboard producer buys some hardware from another manufacturer, like in this case Creative, the hardware is sold like OEM. This means that the manufacturer (Creative) gives its hardware (the Recon3di chipset) to the motherboard seller (Gigabyte), under clear condition that the development of the drivers competes always to the latter (Gigabyte), provided that the copyright of the drivers isn't changed (that's why Windows reports drivers coming from "Creative"). That's how things work and is normal, because the manufacturer (Creative) has all the interest to sell its own implementation of the chipset (Recon3D) they're passing in OEM version to the motherboard producer (Gigabyte).

That said, ZedZedski, I still consider you've been lucky with your Maximus, because a lot of samples of that board have really a lot of audio issues: look, for example, this, this, this, this, this and this.  I could go on with literally dozens of links about pops, crackling, hisses on Maximus VIII while playing sound.

So, I was pretty honest to say, in my previous post, that Maximus VIII Hero is a really good board overall, apart from serious audio issues. But, talking only about audio, the flaw that affects Asus Maximus VIII is much more common than the Gigabyte's one we're discussing about here and it's not a point in favor of (the audio on) Asus' ROG flagship board (Z170's implementation on Sabertooth is much better than Maximus VIII, imho).

Anyway, wouldn't like to go off-topic. Think we should concentrate on the issue of the Gigabyte board(s). For your personal reference, guys, 21 days without any problem, since I disabled Windows and Creative enhancements.

[ZedZedski]

That said, ZedZedski, I still consider you've been lucky with your Maximus, because a lot of samples of that board have really a lot of audio issues: look, for example, this, this, this, this, this and this.  I could go on with literally dozens of links about pops, crackling, hisses on Maximus VIII while playing sound.

Ok, but at least there is a solution if you read articles. At least ASUS is taking care of it and found a fix. I don't have it cause right away I updated BIOS to the latest version and that is why probably I never had that problem.

[Saruman]

At least ASUS is taking care of it and found a fix.

Dunno about a definitive fix but yes, there's no doubt Asus put its hand on consciousness and is trying to give support to solve the issue, while Gigabyte didn't spend even a word and is not updating its audio drivers (the last ones are Windows 7/8 drivers, rebranded to work under 10, but they weren't built from scratch for the new OS).

[wxguesser26]

Hello all.  I have this same motherboard in 4 computers in my house right now.  Two use Windows 7 64 bit, the other two use Windows 10 64 bit.  Other than that, every computer has the same build with regards to processor, video card and memory.  Only one Win 7 computer has issues.  Not what is being explained here though.  About every 3 to 5 days I have to uninstall the sound drivers and reinstall them to get the speakers to work again once the computer comes back from sleep mode.  The Win 10 computers haven't had any issues at all as of yet.  My wife uses one of the Win 10 computers while playing Arc with iTunes running in the background.  My son uses the other Win 10 playing games and watching you tube videos (or just listening to them in the background while playing a game).  He hasn't complained about any sound issues as of yet, though his is the newest build of only a week right now.  The rest have been up and running for 3 months now.

There is no overclocking going on in any of the set-ups and everything is pretty much at the default in the bios, other than the motherboard lighting.  Turned all that off.  Running Bios F6 with the RC2 driver for audio.

[kto]

windows 10 64bit with 5.1 speakers
Ive been using this board for 3 months now, for the first month everything seemed normal or maybe i didnt notice it much. But now my issue is the sound muffles and lowers then goes back to normal, then muffles by itself randomly, and may stay there from anywhere between a few seconds to minutes at a time, happens anywhere between 1-3 times a day to 2-3 days without it happening. switching from headphones, to 2.1 to 5.1 doesnt resolve anyhting, restarting the computer might work, but its still 50/50 chance of it not working. Ive tried everything, bios from f3-f7, latest audio driver, disable everything i can, enable everything i can.
its kinda depressing gigabyte hasnt even responded at all to this issue, even a little post like "we're working on it" would help a little bit. 

[silvercondor]

Hi,

My problem was as follows: loud hissing noises from front panel and rear panel headphone jacks. bought an audio op amp and replaced the one provided with the board, the hissing noises reduced by A TON. there is still a slight hiss but you won't notice it if something's playing... hope this helps someone out there.

btw i live in Singapore and came across this thread while googling for a solution. The op amp i purchased was the exact same one provided OPA 2131PA

[devinmosher]

Just wanted to say I've been following this sine I encountered this problem as well. Uninstalling W10 drivers and installing W8.1 has so far worked for me. I am a windows 10 user. Try it out. Good luck

[kto]

Just wanted to say I've been following this sine I encountered this problem as well. Uninstalling W10 drivers and installing W8.1 has so far worked for me. I am a windows 10 user. Try it out. Good luck

Windows 7 32bit,Windows 7 64bit,Windows 8.1 32bit,Windows 8.1 64bit,Windows 10 32bit,Windows 10 64bit all use the same RC2 driver.

[system450]

Hi,

I haven't noticed problem you described but I don't use headphones mode regularly.
I can provide you a link for older version of Creative Audio Drivers, it was RC1.11 if I remember correctly: http://1drv.ms/1ZDp6pz
You can test with those.

I have another problem.
I have 5.1 speakers connected and the same set in SB Pro Studio. Immediately after windows start, there's no sound from left and right front speakers (tested on Speakers/Headphones tab), I have to switch between headphones and back to speakers, then there's full sound from all the speakers. Could you check if you have similar?
I hoped that RC2 version will fix it but it haven't.

You have to plug in the front speakers jack into the plug near the mic plug. The one near the rear and center/sub plug is for headphones.
I did so and after Windows start everything is ok ! The 5.1 works correctly.

[elc00l]

You have to plug in the front speakers jack into the plug near the mic plug. The one near the rear and center/sub plug is for headphones.
I did so and after Windows start everything is ok ! The 5.1 works correctly.

Very interesting finding You're right, I just checked and it is like you say, even manual mention this, I just never read this part as I thought that it's like on my previous X-fi soundcard - front/headphones are interchangeable. However sound is a bit different now when front speakers are not connected to headphones jack, most probably because audio was amplified previously. Thank you.

[ZedZedski]

At least ASUS is taking care of it and found a fix.

Dunno about a definitive fix but yes, there's no doubt Asus put its hand on consciousness and is trying to give support to solve the issue, while Gigabyte didn't spend even a word and is not updating its audio drivers (the last ones are Windows 7/8 drivers, rebranded to work under 10, but they weren't built from scratch for the new OS).

Anyways, the reason I sold Gigabyte board and got ASUS instead was not only because of sound. There were a lot more issues and features that did not work properly and I had the board long enough to try resolve them. However, shouldn't it be like that I buy a brand new board and I use it without any problems?
Btw, it's been over a month now since I got ASUS and still no problems and everything works perfect. To be more precise got the board on March 28, 2016.