Heya.
I've got an HP dv7t-7000. I've a recent clean install on it and I cannot get the speakers to work properly. This particular machine comes with a pair of Triple Bass Reflex Subwoofers, which means that it has two run of the mill laptop speakers and an additional subwoofer for each. I have installed the latest drivers from the manufacturer. They actually don't have drivers for Win10, so I'm using the Win8.1 ones. The installation runs smoothly and I can see the Beats Audio control panel. However, only the normal laptop speakers are being driven. No sound comes out of the subwoofers.
After a lot of attempts with the manufacturer's drivers: installing with compatibility mode on, telling windows to update the drivers from the device manager, and tweaking every possible setting in the sound controls, I wound up in this thread. I followed the steps, essentially replacing the IDT High Definition Audio CODEC that came with the manufacturer's drivers with Win10's generic High Definition Audio Driver. Naturally, this has removed the Beats Audio control panel since it removed the previous drivers that came with it.
Win10's generic drivers made the left subwoofer work, but it stopped driving all of the right laptop speakers (the right subwoofer never actually worked).
There are 3 sound devices according to the device manager: High Definition Audio Device, Intel Audio1and nVidia Audio1(1These names may not be accurate, I have no access to my computer right now). I suspect the Intel device manages HDMI audio (this might be completely wrong), however I've tried installing Win10's generic drivers to check if it had anything to do with the problem, to no avail. I have not tampered with the nVidia drivers as they didn't seem to be related.
I'd appreciate anything you can come up with, as I am at a loss as to what to try next.
I would first reinstall the HP sound driver that includes Beats Audio. Beats Audio is a software enhancement to the hardware sound device, and in your case apparently the IDT sound driver. After reinstallation (and a restart) check the speaker setup in the Sound Panel/Playback section for the "Speakers" (which should be set as default playback device). Generally, they should be set for "stereo" but there may be some other speaker setup that is required for your specific installation. The HP setup instructions for Win 8.1 should be applicable in Win 10 (Win 10 is basically Win 8.1 "improved").
One caution, do not use any "Win 8" sound software, it must be 8.1 or 10.
Hey fireberd.
I'm afraid I've tried all you mentioned before posting this question, and it hasn't led to any progress.
To be a bit more specific, when I go to playback devices, select the appropiate speaker device, right-click and select configure, Windows only lets me configure the device as a two-speaker setup. Other options are grayed out. This leads me to believe that the problem perhaps does not lie in the sound device drivers but instead in the fact that Windows does not detect all of the speakers due to the complex setup of speakers that comes with this particular machine. I have tried installing all of the manufacturer's chipset drivers, but they have not helped unfortunately.
Appreciate your comment.
Hi,
Do you happen to have a back up of the original Win 7 install ?
If so, I'd recommend restoring it and do and do an upgrade install instead of a clean install of Win 10.
The Beats Audio software isn't that important to make it work, the IDT codec seems to have problems with W10 somehow.
Cheers,
