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I just purchased two new Surface 2's and I am noticing a significant reduction in volume from the speakers compared to my old Surface RT. The speakers also lack any kind of bass. They are very "tinny" and shallow sounding. When using headphones, there is plenty of bass sound and the volume level is not an issue.
I am also experienceing a significant amount of sound crackling (from the speakers and attached headphones) when streaming video from Amazon Instant Video using both the desktop and metro versions of IE. I do not experience this crackling problem with other sound sources like Xbox music, gaming, or other website streaming video (i.e. YouTube).
Since I was experiencing this on two different Surface 2's, it seems unlikely that this is a hardware issue. This is most likely a software/driver issue. Is there anything that I can do to resolve this problem, other than wait for a possible software or firmware update?
Thanks.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Actually this would explain my experience precisely: refresh killed the Audio Enhancements pop-up issue (and the resultant ridiculously low volume levels) -to at least get me back where I started: tinny, scratchy, no-bass volume (most noticeably with XBOX music and Amazon Prime).
Waiting for the driver fix.......
Having decided to have a bit of a play, I decided to refresh my Surface 2 (the joy of RT...refreshes don't mean hours of reinstalling x86 apps lol).
After the refresh completed, I used Windows Update to update my Surface 2 and since then my sound is back to the louder, albeit tinny'ish, sound but what is interesting is the driver version for the Tegra Audio device...this isn't updating.
Windows Update isn't finding an update for this device, so I'm obviously not now experiencing the audio enhancements pop-up issue, but I'm wondering if Microsoft have now pulled the Audio driver updates whilst they work on the problem with NVidia?
If so, it's a welcome response to an obvious issue, but I just wish there wasn't so much secrecy over this issue. I may be completely wrong, but my gut just tells me that Microsoft have been taking various actions to try and stop the outcry over the sound issues, but they've been doing it without actually saying there's an issue and the only time users are realising something has happened/changed is when a someone gets another issue.
If I was paranoid, I'd imagine a conversation happened along the lines of:
Person 1 "There's a real problem with the Audio Drivers and the forums are full of people complaining"
Person 2 "Secretly push an update that will cause the Audio Enhancements to fail and give the user a warning and then pull the driver updates from Windows Update"
Person 1 "Why?"
Person 2 "Because that way, everyone will contact support, who will walk them through a refresh and then when they update, they'll not get the even worse drivers and they'll be happier"
Person 1 "Ooooo, sneaky!"
Again...only a paranoid crazy person would suspect the above ;)
me too.... I have the volume all the way up, and I can barely hear it. Ugh!
I restart after I uninstall the device and the codec with deletion. I would try doing that to the 8/24(my min is 8/14?) do the restart, then install the 8/24 device driver then codec, then no restart, try the 10/13 device then codec... that's what I do...
When you uninstall doe it not install automatically on restart? Mine requires the manual install.
You should be able to see all the drivers if you try and update the drivers and select the let me choose option instead of the automatic update. Unfortunately it seems the only way to go back to either of the previous drivers is to uninstall with the delete drivers option selected on both the device and the codec. This leaves you with no sound, then you have to update the device and codec manually to the 8/14 driver, then manually again to the 10/13 driver. If you want to go back to the quiet driver you have to run the update above from Windows Update.
At least this has been my experience.
the problem is that I'm stuck in 8/24 I can see the 10/13 but I can't install it manually every time I try it ends failing. What should I do in that case? Uninstall the 8/24 and codec with deletion? After uninstalling do you do a restart?
