HP Workstation Win7 Audio Problems

[JMoncrief]

I have just set up a fairly complex HP XW8200 in Windows 7 and am having audio problems. It is an HP XW8200 with two 3.8ghz processors, two RAID controllers with a total of 13 drives in RAID 1+0 (8 SAS in front mounted backplane, 4 SATA internal), and a 1TB disc attached to the onboard SATA controller. I have used a couple of different video adapters, but the current one is an XFX Radeon 5550.

The problem is that I have sound, except that human voices are inaudible except when turned up extremely loud, and a lot of sounds are clipped, for lack of a better word. I have ran the latency checker, & found no problems. Device manager shows no issues with any device, and am using the driver package installed by the Win7 installer. HP offers a driver package for 64 bit Vista, but when I install it, the sound is much worse, almost inaudible. This machine has the integrated "SoundMax" controller.

I have installed no drivers whatsoever for anything except one PCI-X Raid controller and the current video card (except that installed with Win7), and although I have heard that some drivers may conflict with the onboard sound, I have been reluctant to experiment with drivers outside of the sound issue, because the performance of this machine is not only flawless, but awesome.

I realize I could likely solve this by installing a new soundcard, & may end up having to do so, but this machine is running short on PCI slots due to the two RAID controllers using two slots, and blocking two more. I would prefer to fix the SoundMax problem & reserve my last remaining PCI slot for something else.

Any help is appreciated. Note that I am fairly experienced with PC's in general & am a software developer, so it is probable that I have already covered the basics, although I have been reluctant to do anything drastic since the machine runs so well.

Thanks,

Jameson

 

[stormy13]

JMoncrief, welcome to the Seven Forums.

No promises seeing as that has an older chipset in it but have you tried the latest Soundmax driver from Intel,

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=19199&keyword="soundmax"&lang=eng

 

[JMoncrief]

Thanks, I tried it but get an error that says something to the effect that the driver package "is not compatible with my hardware". Not sure if this is truly the case, but it I haven't had any luck installing it.

I have read alot about this, & it appears that there are about a million different possibilities that could cause this problem, one of which is relative to HDD setup, which with as many as this machine has, that is a definite possibility. As for the chipset, while this machine came with XP, the sticker on the front indicates that it is "Windows Vista Capable", which would have led me to believe that it should handle 7 ok, but I have learned that isn't always the case & there are apparently more anomalies between Vista & 7 than it appears to me on the surface.

Thanks for the driver reference, I had not tried that particular set of drivers.... I guess I'm off to newegg for a new soundcard & will see what happens.

 

[stormy13]

Wasn't sure if that driver would work or not, sorry to hear it didn't. That Soundmax audio is really hit and miss with Windows 7. Think you will find that a search of this forum (if you haven't already) will show that more times than not it just won't work with 7.