
Since Windows OS lacks the ability to load generic drivers for every accessory present in the user’s PC configurations, downloading and installing drivers for some of your devices becomes a necessity.

This includes the in-depth audio configuration utility, support for stereo and surrounds playback, audio port detection, audio filters, microphone management, and much more.

By installing this driver package on your PC, you will ensure that your audio hardware works as it was intended by the hardware manufacturer, support all the modern audio codecs and audio encode/decoding standards, and infuse into the OS all the necessary user-facing applications that are used for daily management of audio signals. While this driver package is commonly referred to at Intel High Definition Audio driver on other motherboards, Gigabyte and Realtek decided to brand it as Azalia. in some cases, the simple windows troubleshooting system may partially fix some of the issues, but don't count on it.Gigabyte Realtek Azalia Audio Driver is an important software package for all owners of Gigabyte motherboards that provides the Windows OS with all the necessary system configuration for proper detection, communication, and control of built-in Realtek audio hardware. In conclusion, in most cases the OS is at fault directly for the major sound issues that are very hard to track/fix. Improvisations like disabling all effects will have bad consequences, like lower volume or even undistinguishable audio. Disabling specific things like Dolby, DTS or EAX may partially make things better. Generally, sound is harder to tweak assuming it functions relatively correctly initially. Issues like auto-volume reduction are still unfixed practically. But there are way more functionality problems. In the newer 8.X and 10 versions, it's even a worse quality (but not that of a big decrease like from XP to Vista/7). Even good tweakers like SRS lost a lot of possibilities.

If sound could be considered quite of good quality in XP, in Vista and 7 it lost a lot of quality due to the multiple OS layers interfering with the actual sound card functionality. Overall sound quality and functionality decreased with each major windows version since XP.
