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A friend has bought a new Dell desktop computer, and is having issues with his audio output (some latency etc.). Trying to google for a solution we want to find out what sound card/device he has. Now, his device manager lists 3 devices (see screenshot).

Question: Are the three listed items actual sound devices (card/chip), or are these items just drivers? Where can you find out (in Windows 7) the actual specs of the audo devices?

General questions: It is very unclear to me how audio controllers, drivers, and output devices (line out, etc.) are organized in Windows. There seem to be a million dialog boxes that affect audio settings. How can you know for example to which devices/driver a certain output port is connected? An explanation (or a link to such a document or page) would be appreciated as well.

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a quick resource for more info is. Control pannel Sounds "Manage audio devices"

what i see here is a Realtec, that is usually a onboard chip sound device, should be the most commonly used , connects on the back(and front) of the motherboad/computer, the analog 3.5mm type outputs, any "optical" data sound output S/PDIF. the stuff on the back there :-)

then the AMD high def device, this is the HDMI sound. the audio device is on the video card, it is piped out to compatable digital Monitors (through the Data wire for the montitor) , when the monitor and it are set up correctally.

the Intel one is Probably (i dont know) the HDMI audio for the integrated video sandy bridge type chips??

when we have latency problems here (way back) adjusting the PCI latency in the motherboard bios was the one thing that changed a lot. (not the RAM latency i said PCI) . If that exist in the motherboard bios, and is a controllable item, it is hard to find usually

it is common for people to decrease the latency of the PCI buss, and that is usually the wrong thing to do ??? Increasing the numbers for the PCI latency give a chance for one thing to FINISH something before the next item tromps on it. a setting of 64 or 128 can solve some problems sometimes.
With these notes, hardware can adjust the letency itself, and completly ignore any settings that are made. also low level drivers for various hardware (3rd party type) can change it.

once we find latency in the bios, and everything ELSE was doing what it was supposed to , things just worked??? i donno. it is old info that isnt being discussed anymore, so i tossed it in.

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