Sound issues in Boot Camp to Windows on a new iMac

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Dec 9, 2007
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Hi guys - great forum, I'm learning so much just by lurking and getting the daily thread subscription.

I'm loving my iMac (bought just as Leopard came out) but I do have one minor niggle, and I wonder if I'm just missing something obvious to sort it out.

I've got boot camp set up with Windows XP. When I'm in it, the sound quality is very poor with lots of noise and distorted sound. This goes away when I put headphones in the jack and listen through there. However, in MacOSX I have no sound problems and I haven't noticed any when using the VMware Fusion route into Windows either (although to be fair, I can't run the games in question via Fusion so it might be there and just not noticed).

I'm guessing from that, that it's not a hardware issue but a windows driver issue, but I'm reluctant to mess around with the drivers without really knowing what I'm doing in case I majorly botch something up. Have I diagnosed correctly, is there a solution now, or is it a case of wait and hope that a systems update will fix the drivers in the near future?

Many thanks.
 
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you need to update the sound card drivers
 
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Did you pull the updates from Apples website, or were they on the Windows Update site? Having the same issue with my Mac Pro

Thanks!
 
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I got them from the realtek site. Heres the LINK
 
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Pewari
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Thank you :) Was previously wary of getting the drivers as I did wonder if they had to be Apple specific and if I was going to break anything in the process.

The latest Realtek ones (1.83) seem to have removed the hiss, but the sound still seems fairly poor quality (almost slightly muffled and flat as if you were listening to it through glass or something). Is this as good as it gets on Windows? Or is it a case of tweaking the equaliser somehow (and is there an ideal setting to put that on?). I find that it's really loud too so have to have the master volume on windows down really low otherwise I get deafened by the windows startup jingle!

Such a shame, because the sound is so *good* on the Mac side! Still, just another incentive to get as many OS X versions of software as possible, I guess!
 
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Bring up the realtek HD audio EQ and choose ROCK as the preset.
 
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Pewari
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That's improved it a bit, thanks :)
 

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