How can I adjust bass and treble?

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[Cthru]

A few years ago, I thought I was upgrading my PC speakers by getting a second-hand pair of Bose. I have since lived with very boomy, bassy sound with very little high-end response. It exacerbates my age-related hearing loss, which isn’t too bad but tends to feel severe when trying to understand voice through these. And the bass is simply too much anyway.

I looked it up. A tutorial led me to a tab in my Realtek HD properties that isn’t there: “Enhancements”. Do I need to download a (free) something or other that will allow me to adjust treble and bass, and maybe apply some equalization or offer room quality choices?

Thanks.

• This topic was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Cthru.

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Cthru wrote:

Realtek HD properties

Do you have Realtek HD Audio Manager in control panel ?

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I don’t see anything about audio manager in program or devices, just Realtek Audio driver, and Realtek Audio default device at my speakers.

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Bose speakers are usually bass heavy, but also tend to have peaky highs, so it may be the speakers rather than the PC.

Can you hook the speakers up to a phone or another computer to test?

cheers, Paul

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Cthru wrote:

I don’t see anything about audio manager in program or devices, just Realtek Audio driver, and Realtek Audio default device at my speakers.

Uninstall and re-install Realtek HD driver. It may install Realtek Audio manager

https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+10+realtek+audio+manager

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[EP]

that may not be helpful, Alex5723.

Realtek HD Audio Manager app is only included in standard/legacy Realtek HD audio drivers used in older computers.

In most modern laptops & PCs that come pre-installed with the newer Realtek DCH/UAD audio drivers, the Realtek Audio Console app is downloaded & installed from the Microsoft store and Realtek Audio Console or Realtek Audio Control is used instead of the older Realtek Audio Manager app.

It depends on what audio drivers were originally installed in Cthru’s Dell computer.

UAD = universal audio driver

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by EP.

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I uninstalled Realtek, so now I have no sound functioning, although I see Acer (from my monitor, I guess, though it has in speakers) and my NVIDIA GPU listed.

From the link given above, I have downloaded the 64-bit file:

bc10d79f-e7fa-4cb5-beba-43f3507f5942_7118e7a16abe18cf0fccb3d0345e14859127e328

which is a cab file, not an exe.

Double-clicking on it calls up an Extract dialogue.

Now what, please?

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Please ignore my last post; I got assistance from Dell. Although Realtek again installed without the Enhance tab, he installed Waves Maxx, which has equalization and other gizmos that will do the trick. That’s all I care about.

Thanks for your previous responses. I’m always grateful.

 

 

1 user thanked author for this post.

Elly

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[EP]

what kind of Dell computer do you have, Cthru?
Run programs such as HWInfo or Speecy to gather more information about the hardware on your Dell machine.

Most modern Dell computers with onboard Realtek HD audio devices have Waves Maxxaudio software pre-installed which is where you will find your Bass and Treble options instead of using the Realtek HD Audio Manager (in legacy Realtek HDA drivers) or Realtek Audio Console (in newer Realtek DCH/UAD audio drivers) because Dell chose to have Maxxaudio instead of having the options available from the Realtek audio control panel.

Edit – the one good reason why you do not have the “Enhancments” tab or option is because your Dell computer is using the newer Realtek audio drivers in UAD/DCH format rather than the older & traditional Realtek audio drivers in HDA or non-UAD / non-DCH format. only the HDA or non-UAD based Realtek audio drivers have the Enhancement options available.

DCH = Declarative Componentized Hardware

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by EP.
• This reply was modified 5 years ago by EP.

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MaxxAudio has not worked on my XPS 8930 for many months. In particular, the MaxxAudio Pro does not run at all. Waves MaxxAudio runs but the playback button is inactive. None of the enhancement “knobs” work. I’ve forgotten quite how this played out but at some point I received an error message that the audio drivers needed to be installed and that they could be had from the MS Store. That step never produced any workable software/drivers. Realtek nor Dell never had a driver that worked either. I finally just gave up. I honestly don’t know what if allowing sound in my speaker system or the headphones but Spotify sounds great and so do my games so I’m happy!

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Thanks, I guess we crossed posts here. It’s a Dell XPS 8930. The rep did indeed install it from an existing folder on the machine. Go figure.

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[EP]

that’s good.

If you need to install any other missing drivers for the XPS 8930, you can get them here.

edit – on certain Dell computers with Realtek audio, the “Dell Audio” app is used instead of the Realtek Audio Manager control panel app.

Link to old Dell forum topic – What happened to the original Realtek Sound Manager?

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by EP.

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Much obliged.

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Cthru wrote:

The rep did indeed install it from an existing folder on the machine.

You mean you gave some unknown person remote access into you PC ?

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Alex5723 wrote:

Cthru wrote:

The rep did indeed install it from an existing folder on the machine.

You mean you gave some unknown person remote access into you PC ?

When I bought my Dell XPS desktop directly from Dell, if you were a direct XPS purchaser who was a US-based customer, you also received an enhanced level of USA-based XPS tech support. It was extremely fast without holds, etc. I had to get that assistance once and they used a dedicated support interface that was on the machine and I had to specifically authorize through the XPS support interface.

The XPS interface has a unique customer number and a 3D barcode inside the door covering the optical drives and was pre-entered at the factory and linked to the actual order number.

I have no idea if it still works that way, especially with all the potential issues with the RDP. Since I initiated the call, I was not that worried.

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I think what you are looking for is PC Equalizer, which is a free 10 or 20 band graphic equalizer available in 32 or 64 bit versions for PCs. It works extremely well and as a bonus lets you boost the volume by up to 10db. You can find it here:  https://sourceforge.net/projects/pc-equalizer/

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anonymous wrote:

I think what you are looking for is PC Equalizer,…

The installation appears to fall over if there’s no Flash installed.

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My Bose system has a knob on the back of the Subwoofer to adjust the Bass.

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My two cents: go to Goodwill and if you are lucky you can score an old but serviceable receiver and run the sound out of the computer into and RCA splitter and into the receiver and then into the speakers. You will be amazed at the difference. But that might be too bulky. Another solution is to get a small class D amp on Amazon. Search “class d amplifier.”

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What I do is use the Graphic Equalizer to tailor the bass and treble to my taste.  Graphic Equalizers come in Windows Media Player and VLC.  Granted it’s not as convenient as knob type bass and treble controls, but it works good for me.  The equalizer is usually set to “flat”, middle, zero position by default and you can increase or decrease the bass and treble to suit yourself.

Even astrophysicist Carl Sagan when speaking astronomically used Billions, not Trillions.

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