Windows 10: How can I determine the type of audio driver windows uses for a device?

Hi, thanks for taking my question. I have a Yamaha mixer and I just plugged it in and it worked just fine. I was wondering what driver windows was using? The specific name was nowhere in Device manager. Then I downloaded and installed the mixer's driver. The device still works and again nowhere in DM. How can I know what driver type is being used by Windows? What was the driver name, i.e. Wasabi, MME, ASIO or ??Thanks for your help.

:)

 

Determine the HDA Realtek driver needed for your Audio

First post updated:

1. PowerShell script has been updated to version 1.2 (see Release Notes) and
2. Added a new script to Check Audio device compatibility with an HDA Realtek driver

Any comments and/or suggestions are most welcome!

HTH. *Smile
Dimitri

 

Determine the HDA Realtek driver needed for your Audio

Nice update to the 1st Post Dimitri.......

Thanks,

KB.

 

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.

It should be noted that the following methods (either manual or automatic) apply only to Realtek HDA (legacy) drivers and not the modern UAD ones.


If you have already installed a Realtek driver, suggested by your board's Manufacturer or if you have clean installed and Windows 10 has installed a Realtek driver for your specific Hardware ID (and not just the default/generic Windows 10 audio driver), then proceed with the steps below.

If you have the default/generic Windows 10 driver installed, 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.

Contents

• Option One: Detect Realtek HDA driver Manually
• Option Two: Detect Realtek HDA driver Automatically, with PowerShell
• Option Three: Check your Audio device compatibility with an HDA Realtek driver, with PowerShell

Option One [/i] Detect Realtek HDA driver Manually
To determine which driver you need you must follow these steps:

1. Right click on the Start Menu and select Device Manager or in Search type devmgmt to open Device Manager.
2. Navigate to “Sound, video and game controllers” and open “Realtek High Definition Audio”
3. Select the Driver tab and click “Details”
4. 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 are using 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 are using 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:

Option Two [/i] Detect Realtek HDA driver Automatically, with PowerShell
To automatically detect the type of your Realtek HDA driver, you can use the following PowerShell script.

RealtekAudioDriverIntegration.ps1

Download

1. Download the script, save it on your Desktop (or any other convenient folder) and unblock it.
2. Open PowerShell as Administrator and run the script.

Release Notes of version 1.3 (11-Jan-2020)

• Fixed detection of multiple integrations
• Added INF file required for installation

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:
In PowerShell, either 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 in your Downloads folder, type the following command:
& $env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\RealtekAudioDriverIntegration.ps1


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).


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.

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!




Option Three [/i] Check your 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.

RealtekAudioDriverCompatibility.ps1

Download

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