Sound degradation after installing Windows 10

[RickT]

After installing Windows 10 on my Dell laptop, the external speakers I use sound terrible. They worked great on W7. I installed a new driver for my Realtek soundcard to no avail. The sound is condensed (narrow dynamic range) and is mono as best I can tell. It doesn't matter if I'm playing music from my HDD thru Windows Media Player or over the Internet (Spotify), it sounds like there are heavy cardboard boxes placed over my speakers. Has anyone had (and solved) this problem? I've gone back to listening to CDs on my boom box in the interim. Yeah, it's that bad.

 

[Al Stossel]

Try this to see if it works for you. It took care of my problem. Normally I connected my laptop to an external amplifier and blasted tunes. Once Windows 10 got put on, it sounded like an old AM radio. After making these changes, it's back to normal now.

Right click the speaker down by the clock and date on the main windows screen. Click on Playback Devices. Highlight your speakers in the Playback Devices Window. Click on the Properties button. Then click on the Advanced Tab across the top. In the top box, I have selected the 24 bit, 44100 HZ Studio Quality for my sample rate. In the box labeled Exclusive Mode, I have both boxes checked. Most importantly though, I have the bottom box under Signal Enhancements unchecked. As soon as I unchecked this box, the sound went back to normal quality.

 

[RickT]

Hi Al, thanks for your response. I've got everything set as you do except I do not have a Signal Enhancements box. I do have an Enhancements tab next to the Advanced tab at the top and there is a check box for Environment within that window that is unchecked and I also have a drop down menu for changing the environment settings (arena, bathroom, stadium, etc.) of which I have selected "None." I did use the Test button to check the speakers and I do have stereo sound, but the sound I'm getting when playing any music is still what I would call "compressed" sounding. It seems to effect the bass sounds more so than the treble, but I don't have an equalizer or anything to adjust that. I'll keep working on it but W10 is definitely adding some sound processing that W7 did not. What kind of speakers do you use? Are you using them on a Dell laptop, or something else? Thanks for your help.

 

[Al Stossel]

There was another setting I had to change too. I'll take another look to see if I can find it. What you are hearing is exactly what I was getting too.... no bass and it sounds like you're listening to something that has a really crappy set of blown speakers. What led me to this area was that I found someone that said to keep changing the sample rate because that was the culprit. You may want to try each one of those to see if that changes anything. This is the box where I have 44100Hz Studio Quality. He said to keep trying different ones. That was where I started and then just kept shutting off check boxes or turning them on to see what worked.

 

[RickT]

OK, thanks. I'll try that too. Anything to get my old sound back would be much welcomed.