Suddenly speakers sound really
A system-wide equalizer for Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 / 11
Brought to you by:
jthedering
Menu
▾
▴
Windows 11 latest build
Realtek soundcard
APO Configurator only with SFX/EFX (experimental) for this soundcard.
Up until recently, EQAPO worked perfectly with my speakers.
Now they sound really bad, no bass at all. I use AudioEngine 5+ speakers.
I tried different players like Spotify, Foobar2000 and Tidal. The only way to get the speakers to sound OK is by disabling Audio Enhancements however, disabling this causes the EQ to not apply to the speakers.
I don't know what happened that all of a sudden my spearks sound horrible with EQAPO.
I'm using modifed audio drivers by AAF Optimus, and I never had an issue with this driver.
I reinstalled EQAPO for my speakers, but the results are the same.
Can someone please help me?
Why kind of distortion do you hear?
The major cause of distortion happens when using the 'Graphical Equalizer' (GraphicEQ command) available in the Configuration Editor. This default method of EQ-ing is nice but distortion may suddenly appear after some system change like a Windows update. The developer of Equalizer APO hasn't commented on this. I advise to use biquad filters. The Peace equalizer uses this by default for its equalizer, just to prevent these issues.
Another cause of distortion happens when using VoiceMeeter and Equalizer APO 1.2.1 or lower. Version 1.3 is a fix for that.
You mentioned that disabling Audio Enhancements causes that the EQ isn't applied. It's rather that Equalizer APO isn't working then and therefore the distortion can't happen.
Hi Peter. Thank you for your response.
The distortion I was hearing was as if you took out all the bass from the speakers and played music through a phone.
However, I think I managed to solve this by selecting Install as SFX/MFX. The speakers sound good again while still applying the EQAPO filters.
So we can close this for now.
Thank you.
So this probably has nothing to do with the graphical equalizer command of Equalizer APO. That's just nice to know.
Great to know also that you've found a solution by using SFX/MFX. It could be that on SFX/EFX some sound enhancement was working but what?
Anyway, closed it is :)
You know, if I use the original Realtek drivers for my audio card ALC1220 can't work with LFX/GFX and SFX/MFX, only with the experimental SFX/EFX.
However, since I use a modded driver, as I mentioned in my 1st post, only SFX/MFX works while the other options don't work.
I hope this is useful for anyone else with a similar issue.
Cheers.
That's a good piece of info. The problem is that the creators of drivers usually don't mention the technique there are using. So a bit of experimenting is needed.
The modern SFX/EFX is usually the one to use but some recent Windows updates (10 and 11) reverted to LFX/GFX. Probaby will be back to SFX/EFX in the near future.