Missing Equalizer in Windows 7 Enhancements Tab

Ah HAH! Found it!

For those who were experiencing a similar situation to mine (where EQ settings in Windows or Realtek weren't showing up where they should), check and see if there is another program controlling sound effects and such on your computer. My mobo driver disc installed a THX program onto my computer that seemed to (poorly) be controlling sound effects. I uninstalled it and BOOM. Everything is the way it should be.

Thanks to those who tried to come up with solutions. Helped me narrow things down a lot.

Good work, and thanks for posting the solution !
I'm sure it will help others looking for a solution to this problem.

DavidW7ncus said:

I just looked at my Test PC, and some Playback devices have the equalizer, and some don't...

Guess I should mention why I don't have the equalizer on some devices.
On the PC I looked at, the HDMI output is using an AMD (GPU) driver.

Realtek is the provider for the equalizer enhancement.

It makes sense I don't have the equalizer on this HDMI device - I'm not using the Realtek driver.

I'm sure I could change HDMI to the Realtek driver and get the equalizer, but i don't need it...
Just something else to check if the equalizer is not available.

I have this same problem, I've had my laptop for about 2 years and never have found a solution. I tried downloading realtek drivers and whatnot, but nothing seems to work. I'm really surprised this hasnt been a bigger issue, with the way people listen to music nowadays, but I guess this generation only cares about a stupid bass booster button which is all too easy to find these days. My realtek sound manager has as many presets as I know what to do with, but nothing I can do custom. Oh well there is a box I can check off that says "equalizer" and it makes the audio sound a little different, but there is no clue as to what it sounds like. "Well does it sound good" is just not good enough for me. I guess I'm kind of anal about my music. WMP has a tiny eq if you can find it its like hidden in a skin or something. I wish there was something that could personalize my music experience with streaming audio across the pc and without paying for some dumb poorly written internet program, or worse downloading one for free.

Hello.
Thanks for asking this question.
My enhancement tab only has "Disable all sound effects" option.
How do you check if there's another program controlling sound effects?

Faladu said:

Hello sueling,

Look at your Add Remove programs list.

And....

Run msconfig.exe from a run box and check both Startup and Services tabs for offenders.

You can look in Device Manager under Sound... and see if you have a secondary driver as well.

I removed the HDMI audio driver, I don't use it, and I still don't see an equalizer still in my Realtek HD Audio Manager, but fortunately I don't care.

I do have a physical TONE knob on my 2.1 speaker rig though.
Music wise I use 1by1 and foobar2000 players which have some adjustments within, if needed anyway.

Thank you.

I totally just found my solution to this issue! So I had the same issue as some of the others.. the only option I had in Enhancements was Disable all options.. so I instead went into Playback tab, clicked on the speaker, then selected properties... then onto the General tab and into the properties of the General Tab. Next I selected the Change settings option and I rolled back the driver to the previous one. This one got it back for me...
Hope this helps!