Windows 7 Sound Problems Addressed

One of the primary issues that I found when running my first installation of Windows 7 RTM was a very serious problem with the sound drivers for the embedded sound card on my Gigabyte motherboard. While I certainly had sound, in many areas it was simply unusable. This manifested itself in that, when using a microphone, there was a significant (maybe a quarter- to a half-second) delay in how and when the audio preented itself on the computer.

For applications such as Skype and Adobe Audition, or just about any other application where real-time, live sound is a requirement, this made Windows 7 totally unusable. Seriously.

You simply could not talk and listen within that environment, without those delays affecting your input and output, and consequently, anything that I needed to that invloved live sound required me to reboot my system back into Windows XP in order to be able to perform these functions.

I am pleased to report that within the last week or so, Realtek have released a new set of drivers for their hardware, and these seem to mostly address these issues.

You do need to disable the “Listen to” feature, as that creates an even worse situation, but otherwise, I think I can now use Audition and Skype on Windows 7 without my work being reduced to a babbling piece of gibberish.

Well, no moreso than is normally the case.

Go to the Realtek website for the fix.