Select the Start button, type Sound, and then select Sound Control Panel from the list of results. On the Playback tab, right-click (or press and hold) the Default Device, and then select Properties. On the Advanced tab, under Default Format, change the setting, and then retest your audio device. If that doesn't work, try changing the setting again.

• Microphone Sounds Muffled Windows 10

At times when playing a video or a game or listening to music, you may find that the sound is distorted. In this post, we will see how to fix sound distortion or static problems on a Windows 10/8/7 PC which could be caused due to hardware, driver or other reasons.

Sound Distortion in Windows 10

You may try these suggestions and see which one of them helps you. Follow these steps carefully and help yourself out of this problem.

1] Disable Sound Effects

First, you need to disable all the sound effects & enhancements on the system. Here is how to do it:

1. Press the Win + X and click on ‘Control Panel’ among the options.
2. Double click ‘Sounds’.
3. Click on ‘Speakers’ and then go to ‘Properties’. Click on ‘Enhancement’.
4. Click on ‘Disable All Sound Enhancements’.
5. Click ‘Apply’ and then ‘OK’ to complete this step.

This disables the audio enhancements.

2] Reinstall Driver software in Compatibility Mode

If disabling all sound effects didn’t work, you would need to uninstall and reinstall your Sound drivers in the Compatibility Mode. Before you begin, make sure that you have the driver installation setup for this device ready,

1. Press the Win + X and click on ‘Device Manager’ among the options.
2. Expand “Sound and Game Controllers.”
3. Right-click on the ‘Sound’ device on the list and select ‘Uninstall’.
4. Select ‘Delete driver software’.

Wait for the uninstallation to complete and then restart the device.

1. After the restart, right click on ‘Driver setup file’.
2. Go to ‘Properties’ and click on ‘Compatibility’.
3. Select the ‘Windows 8.1 OS’ option on the drop-down menu. Click ‘Apply’ and then ‘OK’.
4. Run the file and wait for it to install.

3] Check your speakers

If you have VLC Media Player installed and have raised the volume to anything over 100%, chances are, you may have damaged your speakers. If the sound is distorted below 100% volume over speakers but fine with earphones, your speakers need replacing.

4] Reinstall DirectX

If only some programs or games are missing audio, re-install DirectX. You might also try running the DirectX Diagnostic Tool.

5] Set audio to 24-bit format

This is a pretty effective option.

1. Press the Windows + S and enter Sound. Select ‘Sound’.
2. Go to ‘Playback’ and then click ‘Speakers’.
3. Go to ‘Advanced’ and click on ‘Default Format’. Then select ’24 bit’.
4. Click ‘Apply’ followed by ‘Save changes’.

You will need to do this individually for every multimedia app you have.

6] Run Audio Playback Troubleshooter

Play a media file to start your system’s multimedia app. and then follow this procedure to play the Audio Playback Troubleshooter

Microphone Sounds Muffled Windows 10

1. Press Win+S keys.
2. Enter Troubleshoot and select ‘Troubleshooting’.
3. Select ‘Troubleshoot audio playback’. It will troubleshoot the issue if it falls in scope.

Wait till your job is done.

Hope something helps!

Here is another guide that might help you troubleshoot Windows 10 Sound and Audio problems.

Related Posts:

I am using Sony Vaio laptop. Yesterday I upgraded from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10.

After upgrading, the sound quality of Realtek HD Audio has become very bad and extremely low. There is no bass and the sound is distorted and screeching. I have tried updating the Realtek driver but that didn't change anything.

How can I fix my Realtek HD Audio after upgrading to Windows 10?

Steven M. Vascellaro

14 Answers

Had the same problem. What fixed it for me was to disable the Dolby Digital Plus effects.

Find the properties for your output device, click on the Dolby tab, then click on the power button to turn it off. You can even do it as you're listening to something to tell the difference. Not sure what effect Dolby was going for, but it makes everything sound like elevator music.

I used the following to increase the overall loudness:

1. Right-click the Realtek HD Audio Manager icon in the system tray, and choose 'Sound Manager'.

2. Find and select the 'Sound Effects' tab under the main volume slider

3. Check the Loudness Equalization box (mine was not checked by default).

4. Click 'OK' to close the Settings window.

This worked for me. Hopefully it works for you too!

karel

Open 'Realtek HD Audio Manager' somehow via taskbar icons or start menu. On my version, the tab shows as 'DTS'.

Launch it:

Then, disable it:

Enjoy your music!

How to mod men of war. Do the following steps:

1. Go into Sound.
2. Properties.
3. Advanced and change the sound quality from CD to DVD quality.

It worked for me.

None of these tricks helped.

I had major issues playing games like World of Warcraft, I would alt-tab and the sound goes all jerky and distorted like a broken robot. It was really bad playing Facebook videos or anything while software could be using sound like games or other videos/ads.

Only thing that fixed it was new Realtek drivers but not ones on the Realtek website, the drivers listed at Softpedia.

Installed these as the catalog ones and Realteks are dated June 2015. Softpedia have later version from March 2016.

Works fine now

Burgi

I tried every available driver, including Microsoft HD Audio. For me it was a failing stick of RAM. ECC RAM more precisely. Being ECC it got over the errors, but it introduced caching delays and hence the bad sound. Removed the stick that the (Dell) computer reported in RMT (Reliable Memory Technology) log in BIOS and audio worked so purely afterwards..

I had the same problem with my creative sound. I fixed it by going to the devicemanager, right click my soundcard, choose uninstall, then install the proper drivers through the files I downloaded. That fixed my issue.

When uninstalling the driver, also make sure you remove the files for the drivers, or windows will simply reuse the corrupted files again.

LPChipLPChip

If your audio driver is Realtek then try the following, it worked for me:

right click on audio icon from taskbarclick Playback devicesselect Speakers/HPclick Propertiesgo to Advanced tabuncheck 'Enable audio enhancements'click Apply, click Ok.

After upgrading Windows 10 Version 1511 Build 10586.3, I noticed a dramatic drop in audio quality. This fixed the issue for me.

1. Open control panel/Sound
2. On Playback tab, select Speakers/Headphones Realtek High Definition Audio Default Device, then click properties
3. On General Tab, in the Controller Information groupbox, click properties
4. From the Realtek High Definition Audio Properties Dialog Box, on the General Tab, select Change Settings
5. Select the Driver tab and click Update Driver..

I also had very poor sound quality after upgrading my PC to Windows10. Tried to install different Realtek drivers but it didn´t work at all. I found a solution after reading many posts on different forums and it had nothing to do with the driver but with power options. The default setting of Power Options is 'Balanced', changing it to 'High performance' improved immediately the bad sound quality of (Control Panel-Power Options - check High Performance).I hope it will work for many of you as well.

IF you have a SOUND BLASTER zxr Series sound card. The software.You have to go into the Menu. Un-check the highlighted menus in the picture below.Surround/Crystalizer/Dialog Plus (disable/uncheck)Hopefully Sblaster gets an update.

skitchpatterson3's and bekce's answers helped me get started, but I needed to tweak the steps a little bit. I bought an MSI box which had Realtek HD Audio driver. The first thing I needed to do was update the sound driver in Device Settings. After that, I opened Realtek HD Audio Manager and navigated to Sound Effects, which wanted to launch Nahimic 2. The Windows 10 Aniversary update broke Nahimic 2.2, so I needed to download 2.3 from their Facebook page here. The Mega link looks sketchy, but I scanned it with Norton and it looked safe. After updating Nahimic and restarting my computer, my headphone audio was working perfectly.

Overall sound quality and functionality decreased with each major windows version since XP. If sound could be considered quite of good quality in XP, in Vista and 7 it lost a lot of quality due to the multiple OS layers interfering with the actual sound card functionality. Even good tweakers like SRS lost a lot of possibilities. In the newer 8.X and 10 versions, it's even a worse quality (but not that of a big decrease like from XP to Vista/7). But there are way more functionality problems. Issues like auto-volume reduction are still unfixed practically.Generally, sound is harder to tweak assuming it functions relatively correctly initially. Disabling specific things like Dolby, DTS or EAX may partially make things better. Improvisations like disabling all effects will have bad consequences, like lower volume or even undistinguishable audio. In conclusion, in most cases the OS is at fault directly for the major sound issues that are very hard to track/fix. in some cases, the simple windows troubleshooting system may partially fix some of the issues, but don't count on it.

OvermindOvermind

I Had an issue almost same issue . But actually it was my Dolby option was turned On. Which gave me a bad quality sound. (May be my headset issue).When i turned off that everything worked fine for me.Search for sounds in settings,1. Sounds2. Playback Tab3. Double click on speakers4. Dolby Tab5. off

protected by bwDracoDec 29 '16 at 18:47

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