Do you disable/uninstall all other audio drivers/devices?

Hey guys!

I've had an X-Fi Elite Pro for the past 10 years or so and am now upgrading as I can't get the card to work with the newest build of Windows (and it doesn't appear that Daniel_K will be making any more revisions on his W10 drivers). This means that I'm buying a new card!

I decided to go with the Creative ZXR as it has most of the connections that I need, however I was curious what your guys' drivers/supported audio devices looked like. Maybe it was an old way of doing things, but I've always been under the impression that you're supposed to use only 1 main sound output enabled and installed at a time (usually uninstalling/disabling on-board sound).

I just wanted to open up a little discussion and see what you guys do. I have a GTX 1070 installed that of course uses HDMI audio, as well as my on-board audio which has some unique connections such as front panel connectors that are not supported by the ZXR (why the ZXR doesn't have front panel connectors but the Z does is beyond me. Probably because of the audio control module?). I'd love to keep the 3 enabled, but I'm, not sure what the consequences could be leaving all 3 enabled/installed.

Any thoughts? Thanks for reading!

Think less. Play more. Your machine doesn't care. You shouldn't either.

My motto is think more, play less. Don't be a zombie.

I disable and hide the things I dont use.

I say disable what isn't in use and remove the associated drivers so as to avoid any possible conflicts. I have Creative SoundCore 3D and Intel integrated video on my motherboard, both are disabled in the UEFI because I have an X-Fi Titanium but I primarily use my GTX 1080's HDMI output for audio.

If you're not using the HDMI out on your 1070, I'd remove the audio driver associated with that using the uninstaller in Programs and Features, the next time you install video drivers, go through the advanced options and select only the options you need. When installing video drivers, I only install the main driver, the audio driver, and PhysX; I skip the 3D Vision stuff and whatever else might be there that I don't use to avoid having unnecessary stuff eating resources.

Stop buying new hardware and fix your drivers.

I only disable things when they cause a problem. For instance, my monitors will switch my default sound device to my gpu's audio device when I turn them on or off even though they don't have speakers. So I have to disable them.

Yeah no need to disable stuff unless it is doing things like automatically switching to useless audio devices or whatever. I have a bunch of audio devices I don't use in my control panel and it does nothing other than simply clutter up my list.

I always fix things until they're broken.

I disable other sources when they become issues to anything I'm doing at the moment.

I have multiple audio devices with no issue, I just make what I want be Default and that is that.
From the Sound properties you can disable what you do not want to use or just use default on the device you want to use.

Probably an old habit, but I disable the motherboard audio in the bios and my monitor and tv audio are disabled in the playback device while using a creative Z. I also never installed the nVidia hdmi audio driver.
Otherwise win10 would something switch sound when I'd turn the tv on or off to the tv or monitor speakers.

I don't really need the sound card since I'm using the spdif out to a dac (could use motherboard for that) but the onboard mic sound is crap so I keep using the Z for that.

I agree ... but that's just what happens sometimes ...

illram said:

Yeah no need to disable stuff unless it is doing things like automatically switching to useless audio devices or whatever.

Click to expand...

Each of my two monitors shows up as an audio device ... even though neither of them has speakers. Sometimes one of them gets selected as the current audio interface ... and I get no sound.

I tried disabling them ... and they get re-enabled automatically. So there's nothing I can do about that. All that I CAN do is re-select the on-board audio as "default".

My piano software is hard-set to use the outboard audio interface ... so that NEVER gets switched over to an alternate interface.

It's only the on-board audio that gets de-selected in favor of one of the monitor "audio interfaces". There's nothing I can do to stop it. But fortunately it doesn't happen very often.

margrave said:

I agree ... but that's just what happens sometimes ...Each of my two monitors shows up as an audio device ... even though neither of them has speakers. Sometimes one of them gets selected as the current audio interface ... and I get no sound.

I tried disabling them ... and they get re-enabled automatically. So there's nothing I can do about that. All that I CAN do is re-select the on-board audio as "default".

My piano software is hard-set to use the outboard audio interface ... so that NEVER gets switched over to an alternate interface.

It's only the on-board audio that gets de-selected in favor of one of the monitor "audio interfaces". There's nothing I can do to stop it. But fortunately it doesn't happen very often.

Click to expand...

Uninstall the audio drivers for your video card, and disable the device in Device Manager.