[bonjonno]

I recently installed an AV-710 on my second puter. Have had another for over a year with the 473b driver. I installed the current 500b driver on the new machine and it sounds fine. I'm using the rear hi-sample rate analog channels, and the resolution can be set on 96 or 192, it doesn't seem to matter. OK. I've read that people have experienced better sound with 473b drivers, and since I have them on hand I figured why not give it a try. I used the Audio deck Uninstall feature to remove the 500b driver. There is no mention of Audio Deck, Envy 24, or VIA in Add/Remove Programs btw. After the uninstall utility runs, one ini file is left in Programs/Audio Deck folder. I manually deleted that and then reboot. i install the 473b driver, and reboot. Lo and behold there's the same 500b Audio Deck that I tried to uninstall and thought I had. Went thru the whole thing again with same result. Do I have to manually scrub the registry or what? If it's too involved I'll just stick with this driver which sounds fine. It's just, what if it could sound better...

FB2K 0.8.3/AV-710/Marantz amp/Zalytron Focal 133 speakers

 

[Joshatdot]

Driver Cleaner Pro 1.5

In the list of drivers to clean is VIA Envy Audio

 

[bonjonno]

Thanks for the tip. I'd like to report it worked, but it didn't. A dozen reboots to start the week, ugh.

I followed directions to a T. When it didn't work, I repeated, and this time filtered all three
VIA Envy Audio
VIA HD Audio
VIA Vinyl Audio

Both times lots of stuff was scrubbed from the system. I reinstalled 473b drivers, and after the system rebooted, voila, 5.12.1.3647 all over again (500b). Well at least it works and sounds OK. I would like to compare tho. It's a mean ghost in the machine.

 

[infinitesymphony]

If the uninstaller doesn't show up in the Add/Remove Programs box, you can always run the setup file and select Uninstall from there. You could download all of the setup .exe's for the versions you've installed and run the "Uninstall" portion of each of them one by one.

Also, when you first reboot after deleting the drivers and Windows detects the card, just hit Cancel in the new hardware found dialog box. You don't want it automatically installing the wrong drivers.

If 500b was the only version you'd installed before installing 473b, I don't see why there would be references to VIA HD Audio or VIA Vinyl Audio... Those are different things. Have you disabled the onboard sound?

 

[bonjonno]

Thanks for your input. Yes I've tried those uninstall options. I have uninstalled from Device Manager, control panel & Start Menu as well as program setup. I click Cancel right away on the new hardware wizard after reboot.

References to VIA HD Audio and VIA Vinyl Audio, are choices for the Driver Cleaner Pro 1.5, a program that an earlier poster recommended I use. They weren't necessarily on my system.

I've tried this at least a half dozen times now. The onboard audio is switched off in BIOS. 500b was the first envy24 driver installed on this system. It once had an M-Audio driver but it was previously uninstalled.

 

[Joshatdot]

Oh yeah, another thing you could do is delete all OEMx.INF & OEMx.PNF files in C:\WINDOWS\inf folder.

 

[bonjonno]

out of the 1550 files I have in that folder, only four are oem.PNF files in the last month. So I may try again when I figure out how important they are. Don't want to mess something else up. Thanks for the tip.

 

[infinitesymphony]

You don't necessarily need to delete them... Try moving them to another folder. That way, if it still doesn't work, you can drop them back in.

You might be able to find out exactly what each INF file is by double-clicking it, which should open up its contents in Notepad. Most INF files are commented with easily-readable information that will tell you which driver/device they install(ed).

Edit: There's a chance that the version number listed in your Audio Deck is just an old registry value. Between 473b and 500b, VIA added an extra button, so whether or not you have that button might tell you which version was really installed. I can't remember what the button's for, though... I think just extra information. Either way, if you can get two-channel output with 2CH selected (not 2CH hi-sample rate) and the S/PDIF output enabled, the drivers are working.

 

[bonjonno]

Good idea on temporarily moving the inf's. I tried opening all four; three were thousands of lines of code with no discernible text, one was a log of every file that's been unzipped for the last coupla years.

I can get two-channel output with 2CH selected (not 2CH hi-sample rate) and the S/PDIF output enabled, but at 48 kHz auto select only. I'd never use that, but it checks out. So when you say the drivers are working, you mean the 500b drivers, right? I think they work great, especially after some of the nightmares I've read about. I just wanted to compare to older ones, yunno just to A-B. It's the audiophile in me.

 

[bonjonno]

OK. Located the pnf file after another install, because it's the 67KB one. I see three of them recently. Moved them all to a temp folder. Uninstalled driver thru setup. Reinstalled 473b after reboot. Found 500b after reboot. Been there a coupla times now. Except now one channel is decidedly lower volume than the other. 6-10dB. Crap. On the Audio deck VU meters they are equal during the test, but not soundwise at the rear channel outputs. I'm going to unistall and reinstall 500b again and see if that does it. I'm nearing the "shoulda quit while I was ahead" stage.

 

[infinitesymphony]

I remember reading about some versions of the Audio Deck where the volume sliders appeared to be at unity, but the audio was lower in one channel as if the sliders weren't connected. I installed 500b, 500a, and 473b several times and never ran into this problem.

You may have the 473b drivers installed. When I tried the digital output trick with 500a and 500b, it didn't work; I didn't get any audio from the Alt. Out. in regular 2CH mode. The whole idea behind installing the earlier drivers is to use this trick/workaround to get the Wolfson DAC to process 44.1/48 kHz information without upsampling to 96k.

Basically to output analog 44.1 kHz information without upsampling, here's what worked for me:

1. Install 473b.
2. Open the Audio Deck.
3. Select the 2 CH (not hi-sample rate).
4. Open the digital portion of the deck.
5. Enable S/PDIF output.
6. Select the PCM option if it's not already selected.
7. Select Auto under the sample rate options.
8. Configure Foobar to use Kernel Streaming output.

 

[bonjonno]

Oh man. My system is becoming unstable. The speaker test works now only on one channel; silence in the other; sometimes no sound in either. But if I put up a song on FB2K, it plays fine! I cannot use kernel streaming with this driver (500b) It just doesn't work, FB2K brings up an error box.

The ironic thing is that on my main system, I have 473b driver and can do all the stuff you talk about. But I use the optical out and it makes no diff if I'm KS or DS2.0 or hi res or low res or whatever. It all sounds the same and it's great.

I am going to try a system restore to a time before I bought the new soundcard. Then I'll be sure there is no evidence of Envy24. I hope...

 

[bonjonno]

I'm dyin here. Tried three system restores to different points and they all failed. Never had one fail before. I wonder if it has anything to do with last week's DST patch from microsoft?...

Not to be deterred, I uninstalled Envy 24, entered safe mode and ran Driver Cleaner Pro and deleted VIA Envy Audio entries. Then I manually deleted anything in the registry that had Envy24 in it. Everything. Then I reinstalled 473b, rebooted, and found 500b again. It's maddening.

I did manage to unlink all the volume controls, run them up and down, and the balance is back to normal. But I want the old drivers.

My last hope is my acronis system recovery. But that could get really ugly...

 

[bonjonno]

I went thru the entire drill again, but this time I installed 451C drivers. It worked! I set it up like infinitesymphonysuggests above and all worked fine. Until I signed on to the internet (dial up). Then sound ceased (from FB2K, I could hear the modem do its thing thru the card) and wouldn't come back til I switched to DirectSound 2.0. So it's hard to say if this is an improvement.

 

[infinitesymphony]

Excellent! There's probably not much difference between that version and 473b. The problem with workarounds like Kernel Streaming is that any Windows sound (ex. clicking a folder, a dialog box pop-up, etc.) will disrupt the audio, which is what I'm assuming happened with Foobar. Hitting stop, then play usually gets it going again.

Most people in your position go into the Sounds portion of the control panel and disable everything (set the Sound Scheme to "no sounds"). More expensive sound cards have better drivers, including dedicated ASIO support, which would allow you to hear both WDM and ASIO sounds at the same time without one interrupting the other.