Reviews of Realtek High Definition Audio Codecs for Windows

1. 
   DudeBoyz

   Reviewing 2.27 (Jun 25, 2009)

   ADDITION - WDM Driver Version and Windows DXDIAG listing:
   
   Version: 5.10.0.5874 (2.27)
   Version: 5.10.0.5864 (2.26)
   Version: 5.10.0.5859 (2.25)
   Version: 5.10.0.5854 (2.24)
   Version: 5.10.0.5845 (2.23)
   Version: 5.10.0.5832 (2.22)
   Version: 5.10.0.5821 (2.21)
   Version: 5.10.0.5817 (2.20)
   
   That's just for anyone who might need it.
   
   ORIGINAL POST:
   
   Man. They really need to get a handle on this quality control.
   
   I'll outline the multiple version experience in the hopes that it may be help to others who might have the same types of issues.
   
   First - The 221 driver set seems to be the most stable for me on a Windows XP Pro SP2 and/or SP3 platform configuration. If I revert back to that version or use that version in a fresh install (I use Norton Ghost to backup and restore disk images when testing) things seem to work as expected as far as I can tell. But 224, 225, 226, 227 all seem to have issues that are discernable. So I'm using 221 as a base of reference when outlining the problems encountered in later releases.
   
   After installing the Realtek driver, the Realtek Control Panel (RTHDCPL.EXE) is loaded into the Startup group that you can see when executing MSCONFIG from the Run menu / dialog.
   
   With 221, the control panel icon appears in the system tray and seems to function properly. I can either double-click on that icon or right-click over that icon and choose "Sound Manager" to bring up the actual cyan / aqua colored control panel interface. The 5 icons on the "dial" to the right of the EQ bars all respond to mouse input and seem to work as expected. I can define, load, save and delete custom EQ settings as well as enable disable the EQ effect itself. So naturally, this functionality is what I expect from the driver. However, later versions are showing glitches that affect all or part of the functionality available in 221.
   
   In no particular order:
   
   - The Realtek Control Panel loads but does not display the system tray Icon
   - The system tray icon shows, but the CP application cannot be executed from it
   - If the CP does appear, loading, saving and deleting custom EQ settings fails
   
   Via a search, I found that if you go into the Windows Control Panel (Start > Settings > Control Panel) and execute the "Realtek HD Sound Effect Manager", the Realtek panel may load up. If it does, you should be able to click on the small "i" icon in the lower-left corner to bring up the Information window. In the lower-left area of that dialog you can toggle the status of the system tray icon.
   
   Via another search, I found that you can manually alter the registry to allow your custom EQ settings to be loaded as the default. That can be a long process, requiring to you find the "[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Realtek\EQ]" registry entry and doing some manual tweaking to eliminate corrupt entries. It's a hassle.
   
   If you have a working EQ setup, you may want to open up that path in Regedit and create a backup by exporting existing EQ values.
   
   That's what I have been able to figure out so far. Hope it helps some of you when trying to deal with the parade of releases that Realtek has made lately.
2. 
   ZenWarrior

   Reviewing 2.27 (Jun 24, 2009)

   Definitely something in the last version which crashes my system. However, the weekly updates are a real hassle. Maybe time to start avoiding Realtek on any computers I now purchase.
3. 
   CobraPL

   Reviewing 2.27 (Jun 23, 2009)

   Mirror of 2.27 for W2K/2003/XP:
   
   http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FUCUNOWF
4. 
   mjm01010101

   Reviewing 2.27 (Jun 23, 2009)

   I wonder if Realtek realizes that people sit there and try ALL their FTP/HTTP sites to determine which one is the fastest, thereby negating the advantage of having more than one option for where to download? Surely this causes them more traffic overhead than simply having the server decide the best download location?
   
   One also must question how crappy the driver code must be to release weekly versions. There is that much more potential for coding errors.
5. 
   DudeBoyz

   Reviewing 2.26 (Jun 23, 2009)

   Version 2.26 (v5864) seems to fix at least some of the 2.25 issues. But I just noticed that 2.27 is out, so perhaps they found a show-stopper and issued a quick fix.
   
   Frequent updates are ok as long as they fix things, but I wish they would do more thorough testing before they released a new version. Fast and sloppy doesn't win over doing it right the first time. I hope they do better in the near future.

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