...and in my experience are lacking half the features/enhancements tab...unless you allow all the third party garbage to install (Creative, Nahimic, multiple "software components" etc.) to "restore" the stripped features in a vastly inferior way. Bah! Just give me a good, standard, old school Realtek driver with no third/fourth party, gimmicky, usually buggy or broken bloat added.
It's not new, it's been the same for a thousand years.
If your motherboard has a premium audio package (THX or Creative Soundblaster) --- even back in Windows 7 --- your Realtek audio driver doesn't have EQ. See Fireberd's gigabyte motherboard in 2012.
Realtek HD Audio: Equalizer not working properly - Windows 7 Forums
The principle is clearly explained in my sticky tutorial. 99% of the end-users will eventually mistakenly enable multiple EQ's simultaneouly if your computer offers you multiple EQ's and thus ruin your sound. So the only sensible thing to do is delete the EQ in the Realtek HD Audio Manager --- even back in 2012.
The good old days were never the good old days.
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You have to use the included installer exe to install these DCH drivers. If it has 2 installers exe (something like setup.exe and asussetup.exe) use them both. Then run Microsoft store.
If not work, then restart your computer, then use task manager and see if realtek hd universal audio service is enabled on startup.
Read my sticky tutorial for more background info.
Microsoft Store now calls it Realtek Audio Control.
The name difference has been like that since it was launched in 2018. When you actually install it, the app is called realtek audio console.
Official Realtek app spotted in the Windows 10 Microsoft Store - OnMSFT.com
I imagine you are correct, I just never had a board with a "premium audio package" apparently until 2018 (around the time UAD became a thing) or so, so never ran into that problem. Still, the "premium audio package", which I consider to be garbage, third party bloat, can be avoided, at least on the two boards I have that use/support Nahimic, and Creative Soundblaster junk. I just use the generic HDA driver (before Windows is ever connected to the internet so WU won't force in third party stuff) and everything works well without all the nonsense. Also, once those standalone HDA drivers are installed, Windows Updates ceases trying to force, hijack my driver with the third party stuff.
https://www.catalog.update.microsoft...x?q=6.0.9273.1
well those days with HDA drivers are slowly coming to an end as UAD/DCH Realtek audio drivers are widely used in modern computers & motherboards lately, Stigg
and HDA nonUAD drivers are heading towards becoming the "endangered species" (if you know what that means)
heck, even lesser known manufacturers & motherboard makers like Biostar and Supermicro have started to use UAD/DCH drivers with some of their new products. Supermicro started with UAD with versions 6.0.9272.1 & 6.0.9279.1 in December 2021 (latest one from them is 6.0.9374.1 released early July 2022); Supermicro doesn't have any newer HDA drivers since 6.0.9205.1. As for Biostar, they recently released this 6.0.9376.1 UAD/DCH driver for their newly released X670E VALKYRIE motherboard almost a week ago in late August 2022, further reducing/dwindling the chances of new HDA nonUAD driver releases from them.
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