Are Realtek's audio drivers bugged for anyone else?

Been having some weird issue with Realtek's audio drivers, and I've tried at least half a dozen of them. I have my system volume set up just fine, but if I put the machine to sleep and wake it back up, the volume becomes much louder. The only way to fix it is by either rebooting or unplugging/re-plugging my headphones. The standard Microsoft audio driver has no issues.

 

I think I've talked with one, maybe two people that had similar issues. Not very many though, at least that I can think of. We did try some different versions of the Realtek drivers but ended up going with the default Windows ones. I remember the one person didn't really need any added features from the Realtek and it wasn't worth it to them to spend time figuring it out.

 

Yeah, I don't use any of the Realtek's features, not even the X-Fi add-on. The thing that was a real pain was getting Windows 10 to stop automatically downloading the driver as part of its regular update check. I had to use Group Policy Editor to add the hardware IDs to a setting that prevents Windows from installing the driver, so the next time WU tried to do it, it came back with an error message. I then used MS' tool to hide the update all together. For some reason, just using the tool straight away caused the driver not to show up on the list. It works fine now, provided I plug my headphones into the rear line-out port, as the default MS driver reserves the main headphone output jack for SPDIF/optical. Actually, right now I have my headphones running through the audio out on my Dell monitor, which actually works a bit better because when I switch to my PlayStation TV on the HDMI port, I don't have to disconnect the cable.

 

Might not be the best solution, but it sounds a little bit more convenient.

 

I had this happen once. From memory I uninstalled the drivers, then after a reboot they were still their but fixed.