Windows 10: 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.

If you have already installed the appropriate driver, suggested by the Manufacturer, or if you have clean installed and Windows 10 has installed a driver for your specific Hardware ID then proceed with the steps below.
If not, 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.

1. Detect Realtek HDA driver Manually

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:

A. If you have Windows 10 64-bit and have the 64-bit Realtek driver installed:

FF01 = FF00 with Fortemedia (FMAPO) Integration
Code:

FF03 = FF00 with Nahimic Integration
Code:

FF04 = FF00 with Conexant (CXAPO) Integration
Code:

FF06 = FF00 with MaxxAudio Integration
Code:

FF0C = FF00 with Intel (DTS/SST) Integration
Code:

FF10 = FF00 with Creative Integration
Code:

B. If you have Windows 10 32-bit and have the 32-bit Realtek driver installed:

FF01 = FF00 with Fortemedia (FMAPO) Integration
Code:

FF03 = FF00 with Nahimic Integration
Code:

FF04 = FF00 with Conexant (CXAPO) Integration
Code:

FF06 = FF00 with MaxxAudio Integration
Code:

FF0C = FF00 with Intel (DTS/SST) Integration
Code:

FF10 = FF00 with Creative Integration
Code:

2. Detect Realtek HDA driver Automatically, with PowerShell

To automatically detect the type of your Realtek HDA driver, you can use the following PowerShell script.

*Arrow RealtekAudioDriverIntegration.ps1

• 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 1.2

• Updated special files to driver version 6.0.1.8648 and higher
• Added 32-bit version compatibility
• Fixed bug when detecting Realtek Audio CODEC ALC1150

*note Note 1
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).

*note Note 2
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:
Either in PowerShell, 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 on your Desktop, type the following command:
& $env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\RealtekAudioDriverIntegration.ps1


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.


As a final comment, it should be once again noted that the above process (either manual or automatic) applies to Realtek HDA (legacy) drivers, but some of the "special" files per driver type should apply to UAD drivers too.

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!


3. Check Audio device compatibility with an HDA Realtek driver, with PowerShell

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.

*Arrow RealtekAudioDriverCompatibility.ps1

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. *Smile
Dimitri

:)

 

Determine the HDA Realtek driver needed for your Audio

GITHUB has the UAD Driver too.....

 

Determine the HDA Realtek driver needed for your Audio

To use the guide in 1st post there are two prerequisites:
1. You must have a Realtek driver installed, which came with your system or you have downloaded from the system's manufacturer
2. This driver must be an HDA one. As I clearly state at the end of the post the method works primarily for HDA drivers, but it might be useful to UAD drivers too.

So once you have the Realtek driver installed, then follow the steps in the 1st post to find the correct integration you have.
For instance this method was not useful to our fellow member @Kbird as Asus installs all possible integrations and there is no way to distinguish the one they finally use.

 

Determine the HDA Realtek driver needed for your Audio

HDA = High Definition Audio = Old style Realtek Driver...... you would have Realtek Manager (not Console)

UAD = universal Audio Driver = New Windows 10 Driver Type ......Do you have Realtek Console ?


assuming you have the right MB listed you have the Creative Labs Integration , the Drivers are even listed as Creative Audio Drivers here :

GA-Z270X-Gaming 9 (rev. 1.0) | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global


Which means you should try the drivers in the GITHUB Download in the Folder called FF10