RealTek audio loud, in-game audio sharply muted

[AndarielHalo]

This is a problem that just started after having my drive wiped and OS re-installed.


Sound plays quite loudly when played through virtually anything; media players, Youtube, Firefox and Internet Explorer, anything. Yet the sounds from certain video games are extremely low in volume, which has never happened to me before.

Also worth noting: At seemingly random intervals, certain sounds in the games would play at full volume.


Attaching my DxDiag




One thing I noticed is that in the Playback devices, the stereo mix always picks up sounds louder than the speakers play out, unsure if this is related at all.



Also not sure if it's related or relevant, but my original system had the hard drives set on IDE, but now they're both set on AHCI




EDIT: I think I've solved it. It was just a matter of turning on Loudness Equalization. Leaving it open because I wanna know if this is indeed the issue or just a quickfix.

 

[fireberd]

I doubt that the loudness is the correct "fix" since the sound is OK except in games. Many games have an option for the sound level and can be adjusted in the game setup. Others use MIDI to generate the sounds.

 

[AndarielHalo]

I've fiddled with the in-game options relentlessly, and the volume only gets lower with each new option. Compared to how ridiculously loud music files are in windows media player, this Loudness Equalizer seems to be as close as (if not the actual setting I had) the way my old system's sound was.

 

[fireberd]

What RealTek driver is installed? As this is an HP, according to your "My System Specs", you should be using the HP supplied sound driver (which is the preferred driver). Since the OS was reinstalled was the HP drivers installed or in the case of RealTek, the generic drivers from the RealTek site? (RealTek has a notice on their download site that you should obtain the drivers from the PC vendor, or in the case of a custom built PC the motherboard vendor).

 

[AndarielHalo]

My computer isn't an HP, though many of the files and programs and other things come from a time when I had an HP computer. No idea what any of the sound things are, except that my Motherboard came with RealTek HD drivers to install.

 

[fireberd]

Are you talking about the PC that you have listed in "My System Specs" or another PC? If its the one listed in the "My System Specs" that needs to be updated.

When it was reinstalled, was the motherboard vendor's sound driver reinstalled?

What I'm getting at is, if the correct OS vendor driver was not installed that is the first thing that needs to be done.