GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 Audio Windows 10

[spluff]

Hi all,

Please reply soon.

I am thinking about buying this motherboard today or the Asus Hero.

I have read a lot of posts about sound issues.

Can people confirm that it is okay with this board and windows 10 with onboard sound?

Cheers
spluff

[dmdilks]

All you can do is try. I have GA-Z170X-Gaming 3 board and not having any problems. Nut I don't run windows 10. Plus Maximum PC just pick the GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 board #1 too.

[jhobe6678]

I have this board and honestly I love it. My problem that I'm having is this.

My system is simple. I won't go too into detail.

Z170X Gaming 7
Intel I7 6700K (Coolermaster Hyper 212)
Corsair Vengence 32GB DDR4 2400
nVidia GTX-750 Ti SC
EVGA Supernova 750w
Win10 Pro x64
Drivers all up to date, bios at F6

My sound is simple, I don't game on the system. I have the audio running from Line Out through a 3.5mm to 2x 1/4 TRS plugs into a passive sound control knob and from that into two Behringer Studio Monitors. I like my music.

Sometimes when I turn on the PC there's no sound at all. Reboot doesn't fix it. But if I unplug the jack and plug it back in, the sound works and boy does it drive these monitors! I'm wondering if the passive audio knob has something to do with it? I have the gain switch on the MB turned on to the higher output, so the monitors get fed well. Thinking of switching it down and maybe removing the knob, since I can control the audio from my keyboard so easily.

Does anyone else have this issue at all? With no audio till you unplug and plug the jack back in? I'll troubleshoot and maybe update the thread if I remember.

Anyone?


**UPDATE**

So I shut the PC down and switched the gain to normal, turned up the knob to max to prevent any resistance feedback or something. No audio! But I did what I read in another post and switched from Headphone to Speaker and poof... Sound came back just fine. iTunes is open and sounds great.

PS I hate the SBX Pro Studio, it really makes everything over driven and sounds like crap. I shut it off.

So... Switching to Headphones and back to Speakers is making it come back. FYI I had my Headphone/Mic jacks on my case plugged into the header on the MB before (HD Audio, not AC'97) and unplugged it before I wrote on this forum. I read that could be an issue but it didn't make a difference either.

[Saruman]

On Gaming 7, the implementation of the Recon3Di is totally wrong. You'll have your sound distorted all of a sudden without a reason and change to robotic, unless you disable all windows enhancements and all the enhancements in the Creative control panel. There are a lot of threads here and in other forums on Internet where we're confronting to understand the causes, and the culprit seems to be the drivers (written by Gigabyte under Creative license and authorisation, being the Recon3Di chipset an OEM one, so drivers are to be written by motherboard manufacturer).

You'll want to go for a Gaming 3, 5 or 6, because they have a simple Realtek chipset instead of this Recon3Di, that is better on the paper but phenomenally unsupported by Gigabyte on real terms.

[polypenko]

I have the GB z170x gaming 7 MB since August  sound works perfectly no problems at all.

[Saruman]

Guys, on Newegg this (otherwise great) board is well known to have audio problems, with Windows 10 at least. And on this other link, we're discussing about it, amongst all the other places on the net. A guy from Creative, by the way, noticed the thread and promised to get in touch with OEM department to make them try to wake up Gigabyte.

Nothing you can't solve with a dedicated soundcard, I guess, but... meh.

[jhobe6678]

So far I've removed the Creative software and let Windows take over on its own. I also uninstalled the device in Windows System Manager, telling it to remove the drivers as well and I let Windows detect and install it on its own.

Seemed ok, but didn't use the computer a lot.

I then did the F7 Bios update.

So far it still seems ok. I hear the audio right on boot. I never had a problem with the distortion, except if I listened to music really lout on my studio monitors, but removing the Creative software solved that. My studio monitors are hard to make distort so I knew it was the software.

I still have my E-MU 1616 PCI-e sitting in a box and I know the drivers work in Win10, maybe not stable but they work. I just don't want to install a sound card if I don't have to and I don't need the EMU-1616 anymore as I'm not running a DAW. I just refuse to get rid of the studio monitors.

Anyone else?

[Elny]

Hi All. I am also experiencing sound issues with Gaming 7 motherboard.

I chose to purchase this Gaming 7 motherboard because of its Creative Recon 3Di sound chip proclaimed to provide outstanding close to amazing sound enhancements and experience. And I am starting to regret that.
The sound intermittently gets distorted without any good reason or change to settings. The sound becomes robotic crackling.

I upgraded my BIOS to latest (to the date of this post) ver. F8d (beta). I followed the suggestion on this thread and disabled all windows enhancements and all the enhancements in the Creative Control Panel.

For few days after that I was not experiencing similar issues. I thought the problem was resolved but just another day it happened again. I must say, sound gets distorted from time to time still. But it happens far less often than before though hardly anyone can accept this as a solution. The problem persists and is quite annoying.

Temporary work around is to reboot the computer as nothing else seems to help to return the sound back to normal if it “trips” to robotic. This is very annoying as well as the fact that Creative sound enhancements are now completely disabled which completely defeats the purpose I bought this particular motherboard.

Also I do not experience problems with automatically switching sound output from front panel (headphones) to rear panel (speakers) when connect or disconnect headphones jack at the front panel port - this function works OK and as expected for me.

I am really hoping to find a good solution for this problem. It would be ideal if Gigabyte representatives stepped in sooner to resolves this problem.

GA-Z170X Gaming 7 EU (BIOS version: F8d beta)
Intel Core i7 6700K (NZXT Craken X61 water cooling)
GSkill Ripjaw 2x 8GB DDR4 3000 running on XPM settings
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 4GB
Corsair RM850i 850W PSU

Win10 Pro x64
Motherboard drivers are all up to date from Gigabyte's website
Other drivers are also upto date.
BIOS version F8s (latest beta)

[devinmosher]

I dont recommend it. If you look at all the 3 eggs and down on New egg (which is give or take half the total reviews) they all mention sound issues. It seems that this particular board is the black sheep of gigabyte and they want nothing to do with it. Last driver update was january.
Had it not of been for the sound issue, I would highly recommend it as it is an amazing board and I havent encountered any other issues but if buying a stand alone sound card along with the board doesnt bother you....then get it!

[jhobe6678]

I dont recommend it. If you look at all the 3 eggs and down on New egg (which is give or take half the total reviews) they all mention sound issues. It seems that this particular board is the black sheep of gigabyte and they want nothing to do with it. Last driver update was january.
Had it not of been for the sound issue, I would highly recommend it as it is an amazing board and I havent encountered any other issues but if buying a stand alone sound card along with the board doesnt bother you....then get it!

To be honest, I wouldn't care if I had to throw in a sound card. While sound is important to me, this is working just fine for my needs. Otherwise the board is pretty awesome in its performance. Everything else has been stable and clean so far. In the past I never bothered with onboard sound unless I was going digital, then I just would use the built in Coax or Optical. This system is hooked up to a pair of 6" studio monitors and it works just fine for it.

Since I upgraded the bios, the sound has been just fine. I haven't gone back to the Soundblaster software yet, I may try that soon. But for now it's working, so that tells me it's a software issue and I blame Creative for that, which I can't really fault them because they've always been the king in PC sound for the low end to mid range markets.

[Elny]

Hi. There is further development. And I apologies in advance for possibly not very useful post here. But I thought I should be honest and clear Gigabyte’s good name.

Following the suggestion on this thread I once again tried to disable all Creative Control Panel and Windows sound enhancements. Though I was not hoping for anything. But since then I did not have problems for about a week continuously. Then I re-enabled these sound enhancements in Windows and then Create Control Panel. And now it is probably third or fourth week continuously that the problem is gone and has not repeated. It is probably safe to say now that disabling/enabling enhancements resolved the issue with somewhat permanent effect.

Unfortunately, I cannot explain why this time the issue was resolved. Apart from this my PC received couple of regular monthly Windows 10 updates. Apart from that, I can say, there were no other changes to the PC hardware or software configuration. Among Windows 10 updates however I could not see any directly related to Creative software and audio drivers. So I cannot really link these to the issue resolution.

The motherboard just works OK now. I do not have any problems with sound now. I know that new Windows 10 build is now out and I was thinking to do fresh installation of Windows 10. I will report back once I do so probably within a month or two from now.

[Leppermessiah]

I have this board and have never experienced any issues with the sound.  I crank music all day, every day through Kanto YU3 8 inch bookshelf speakers.

What else can I say?  This board has been really good to me so far.

[JaKSLaP]

Hi. There is further development. And I apologies in advance for possibly not very useful post here. But I thought I should be honest and clear Gigabyte’s good name.

Following the suggestion on this thread I once again tried to disable all Creative Control Panel and Windows sound enhancements. Though I was not hoping for anything. But since then I did not have problems for about a week continuously. Then I re-enabled these sound enhancements in Windows and then Create Control Panel. And now it is probably third or fourth week continuously that the problem is gone and has not repeated. It is probably safe to say now that disabling/enabling enhancements resolved the issue with somewhat permanent effect.

Unfortunately, I cannot explain why this time the issue was resolved. Apart from this my PC received couple of regular monthly Windows 10 updates. Apart from that, I can say, there were no other changes to the PC hardware or software configuration. Among Windows 10 updates however I could not see any directly related to Creative software and audio drivers. So I cannot really link these to the issue resolution.

The motherboard just works OK now. I do not have any problems with sound now. I know that new Windows 10 build is now out and I was thinking to do fresh installation of Windows 10. I will report back once I do so probably within a month or two from now.

Hi sorry for bumping an old thread just want to know if you have resolved your issue, because i am planning on getting this board but have been reading everywhere about sound issues