Determine the HDA Realtek driver needed for your Audio
Here, at Tenforums, we have a very looong and detailed thread regarding updates to the Realtek HD Audio Driver Version, which is maintained regularly.
One of the most asked questions in this thread, is which type of Realtek driver one needs to update his Audio, since there are quite a few available.
As bluntly put by one of the most knowledgeable fellow members: "this is Greek to me" and he is absolutely right! So let's try to shed some light to this really complicated issue.
It should be noted that the following methods (either manual or automatic) apply only to Realtek HDA (legacy) drivers and not the modern UAD ones.
If you have already installed a Realtek driver, suggested by your board's Manufacturer or if you have clean installed and Windows 10 has installed a Realtek driver for your specific Hardware ID (and not just the default/generic Windows 10 audio driver), then proceed with the steps below.
If you have the default/generic Windows 10 driver installed, go to the system’s Manufacturer Support page and search for the Audio driver for your system. It doesn’t matter if you find the latest version, but make sure to download the suggested by the manufacturer driver for your Audio chip, install that driver and then follow the steps below.
Contents
- Option One: Detect Realtek HDA driver Manually
- Option Two: Detect Realtek HDA driver Automatically, with PowerShell
- Option Three: Check your Audio device compatibility with an HDA Realtek driver, with PowerShell
To determine which driver you need you must follow these steps:
- Right click on the Start Menu and select Device Manager or in Search type devmgmt to open Device Manager.
- Navigate to “Sound, video and game controllers” and open “Realtek High Definition Audio”
- Select the Driver tab and click “Details”
- In Details search for any of the "special" files, for your specific driver, according to the list below.
The image below is an example of Realtek driver with Conexant (CXAPO) Integration and the HDA driver type needed to update the Audio device, according to the "special" files lists below is FF04. You must have something similar, for the same or other integration:
If you cannot find any of the "special" files listed below, it means that you don’t have any additional integration (feature).
In this case, to update your driver, you need to install the FF00 - Generic driver type.
Besides the Generic one (FF00), which is what the name implies, a generic driver with no additional integration, for each one of the other driver types, the "special" files you must look for to decide which driver you need, are:
FF01 = FF00 with Fortemedia (FMAPO) Integration
Code:FMAPO32.dll FMAPO64.dll FMAPP.dll FMAPP.exe
FF03 = FF00 with Nahimic Integration
Code:NAHIMICAPOlfx.dll NahimicAPONSControl.dll NAHIMICV2apo.dll NAHIMICV3apo.dll
FF04 = FF00 with Conexant (CXAPO) Integration
Code:Caf64api.dll CAF64APO2.dll CX32APO.dll CX64APO.dll CX64Proxy.dll cxapo.lncs cxapo.prop CXAPOAgent64.exe
FF06 = FF00 with MaxxAudio Integration
Code:MaxxAudioAPO20.dll MaxxAudioAPO30.dll MaxxAudioAPO4064.dll MaxxAudioAPO5064.dll MaxxAudioAPO6064.dll MaxxAudioAPO7064.dll MaxxAudioAPOShell64.dll MaxxAudioCapture64.dll MaxxAudioEQ64.dll MaxxAudioMeters64.exe MaxxAudioRealtek64.dll MaxxAudioRender64.dll MaxxAudioRenderAVX64.dll MaxxAudioVienna264.dll MaxxSpeechAPO.dll MaxxSpeechAPO64.dll MaxxVoiceAPO2064.dll MaxxVoiceAPO30.dll MaxxVoiceAPO3064.dll MaxxVoiceAPO4064.dll MaxxVolumeSDAPO.dll tbb_waves.dll WavesGUILib64.dll
FF0C = FF00 with Intel (DTS/SST) Integration
Code:IntelSSTAPO.dll IntelSSTAPO_FF.dll IntelSstCApoPropPage.dll IntelSSTPreproc_v124.dll rtkSSTsetting.dat rtkSSTsettingFF.dat
FF10 = FF00 with Creative Integration
Code:GWfilt64.sys MBAPO232.dll MBAPO264.dll MBAPO32.dll MBAPO64.dll mbfilt64.sys MBPPCn64.dll MBppld64.dll MBTHX32.dll MBTHX64.dll MBWrp64.dll
FF01 = FF00 with Fortemedia (FMAPO) Integration
Code:FMAPO.dll FMAPP.dll FMAPP.exe
FF03 = FF00 with Nahimic Integration
Code:NAHIMICAPOlfx.dll NahimicAPONSControl.dll NAHIMICV2apo.dll NAHIMICV3apo.dll
FF04 = FF00 with Conexant (CXAPO) Integration
Code:Caf32api.dll Caf32APO2.dll CX32APO.dll CX32Proxy.dll cxapo.lncs cxapo.prop CXAPOAgent.exe
FF06 = FF00 with MaxxAudio Integration
Code:MaxxAudioAPO.dll MaxxAudioAPO20.dll MaxxAudioAPO30.dll MaxxAudioAPO40.dll MaxxAudioAPO50.dll MaxxAudioAPO60.dll MaxxAudioAPO70.dll MaxxAudioAPOShell.dll MaxxAudioCapture.dll MaxxAudioEQ.dll MaxxAudioMeters.exe MaxxAudioRealtek.dll MaxxAudioRender.dll MaxxAudioRenderAVX.dll MaxxAudioVienna2.dll MaxxSpeechAPO.dll MaxxVoiceAPO20.dll MaxxVoiceAPO30.dll MaxxVoiceAPO40.dll MaxxVolumeSDAPO.dll tbb_waves.dll WavesGUILib.dll WavesLib.dll
FF0C = FF00 with Intel (DTS/SST) Integration
Code:There is no 32-bit FF0C integration
FF10 = FF00 with Creative Integration
Code:MBAPO232.dll MBAPO32.dll mbfilt32.sys MBPPCn32.dll MBppld32.dll MBTHX32.dll MBWrp32.dll
To automatically detect the type of the Realtek HDA driver needed for updating your current driver, you can use the following PowerShell script.
RealtekAudioDriverIntegration.ps1
Download
- Download the script, save it on your Desktop (or any other convenient folder) and unblock it.
- Open PowerShell as Administrator and run the script.
Release Notes of version 2.1 (30-Jan-2021)
- Removed Identification of Audio CODEC, as there are several exceptions to Realtek's naming convention.
To run the script you must first make a note of the folder where the script has been saved. Once you know where it is located you can run it in any of the following two ways:
In PowerShell, either navigate to the folder where the script is located and run it from there. e.g. if it is saved in the Downloads folder you type the following two commands:
cd $env:USERPROFILE\Downloads
.\RealtekAudioDriverIntegration.ps1
Or
If you want to run the script from your current location in PowerShell and the script is saved in your Downloads folder, type the following command:
& $env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\RealtekAudioDriverIntegration.ps1
If you haven't already changed the PowerShell ExecutionPolicy to allow running scripts, you need to do it. So before running the script (or any other script, from a source you trust), run the following command to allow the script to run in the current PowerShell session.
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process
Remember that closing the PowerShell window your ExecutionPolicy returns to its defaults, for every new PowerShell window (session).
When the script is completed, it will give you the driver type (integration) you currently have installed for your Audio device and will propose which HDA driver type you need to use for updating your Realtek driver.
It will also create a log file named RealtekAudioDriverIntegration.log, on your Desktop, which you can examine or post in this thread to verify that the results produced are accurate.
Example of script output:
Example of the log file, the script creates on the user's Desktop:
The script has been tested and runs well, but like every piece of software, the more people run it and give feedback the better it will become.
It will not harm your system, as it doesn’t make any changes to anything and if it doesn’t provide accurate results, you can post the contents of the log file it creates on your desktop, to find the reason it failed.
That's it. You now know, which driver type you need to update your Audio. Find the appropriate one and update to the latest version!
To check if a downloaded HDA Realtek driver is compatible with your audio device (i.e. if the audio device Hardware ID is included in the ".inf" files of the Realtek driver), follow the instructions given above on how to run a PowerShell script and run the following script.
RealtekAudioDriverCompatibility.ps1
Download
The script will open a folder picker window and ask you to provide the location where the downloaded Realtek driver has been expanded/extracted.
It will then check if the driver’s ".inf" files include your system’s Realtek audio device Hardware ID and give you the complete name of the ".inf" file that contains your audio Hardware ID.
HTH.
Dimitri
Last edited by ddelo; 30 Jan 2021 at 08:10. Reason: Updated Option 2 PS script to Version 2.0