Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 (Realtek) - No bass/sub-woofer

• Speaker Setup plays all speakers fine
• Applications do not play any bass through subwoofer (or really, at all)
• Custom built PC using Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 motherboard onboard audio.
• Windows 10 fresh install
• Tried latest driver from Gigabyte, Realtek, and Microsoft
• Windows "default" driver does play bass through sub-woofer, but audio stutters and is quiet.

Not sure what else is relevant to mention; I've tried following various posts with suggestions to fix this, with no success. I've been at this for quite a few hours and am very frustrated.

Please let me know if you have any questions, or suggestions on how to resolve

What kind of speakers? Standard analog computer speakers or USB connected speakers?

Do you have the correct speaker setup in the Configuration (e.g Stereo, 5.1, etc)?

Has this ever worked correctly?

Stuttering can have many causes, no "one fix" for this.

I can associate with a custom build. I just finished (yesterday) my new build with an i7 6700K CPU. Several "stumbling blocks" and defective hardware to overcome.

Is this problem a recent problem or has it never worked correctly?

One thought on the stuttering. My old PC had a Gigabyte Z77 motherboard. I had some problems with audio dropouts and the Latency Mon program showed "problems running audio". I also use my PC for my recording studio and was having dropouts in the recording program, too (separate audio interface for recording). As it turned out, I had installed the Gigabyte supplied "Easytune" (Easytune6 in my case) and that was the culprit. As soon as I uninstalled Easytune (and rebooted) the dropouts went away and Latency Mon was clean. Suggest you run the free Resplendence Latency Mon and see if that shows up anything.

If speaker test is good, but applications are not, it sounds like a configuration issue somewhere along the way. Although it is a Recording parameter, "Stereo Mix" needs to be set as the default Recording device. It can affect playback.

Thanks for your assistance so far.

It's hard to say if this is new or not, because this is the first time a 5.1 speaker setup has been plugged in to the PC. I did some more testing this morning, and this is what I've found.

Using the Realtek drivers: nothing I can do will get the subwoofer to play - just a buzz.
Using the Microsoft driver: it will play extremely quietly (hold to ear to hear) when bass boost is enabled; buzz present.
Using either driver: speaker test plays loud and clear; still has buzz but is drowned out by the sound of speaker test.

I also tried connecting these speakers to another computer. For better or worse, it also has a Realtek card, although a different model I believe (different software). I also have a Logitech G933 7.1 surround sound headset (USB) which works beautifully on this system. I also had a 5.1 system connected via optic, which worked fine as well.

Either driver: subwoofer plays extremely quietly with a buzz on the line.

I set Stereo Mix to be the default recording device, but it didn't help. I tried swapping a satellite/sub, and confirmed that the sub works fine, it is just that there is very little/no signal on the line.

I agree with you that it seems like a configuration issue. Although, I've tried every different configuration I can think of. I don't understand why Windows doesn't just play audio like the speaker configuration test.

The stuttering seems to be gone now, so I didn't run the Latency Monitor.