[SOLVED] Acer Nitro 5 - Laptop microphone extremely quiet after updating Realtek audio driver ?

[ShangWang]

Yesterday I was using my microphone just fine on Microsoft teams after updating my audio driver. It used to be "Realtek high definition audio" and now it's just "Realtek audio" Updated driver

Today I was trying to use my microphone on discord and the sound pickup was terrible. I tried disabling sound reduction, raised my microphone input to 100 and to 30.0 db as well as uninstalled the driver and rebooted and the sound pick up is still terrible. I have to be extremely close to my laptop
sound input to be able to be heard. I plugged in a headset and tried using that microphone and it was just as quiet. Does anyone know any solutions to this?

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Where did you download the driver from ?

Have you tried rolling back to the previous driver in Device Manager ?

 

[ShangWang]

Where did you download the driver from ?

Have you tried rolling back to the previous driver in Device Manager ?

Before rolling back drivers I uninstalled relatek audio and rebooted. There is now no longer an option to roll back drivers. I used driver booster to automatically update my drivers, it is a safe and reliable program.

 

[ShangWang]

Where did you download the driver from ?

Have you tried rolling back to the previous driver in Device Manager ?

I uninstalled again but checked deleting the driver software, my mic input volume is fine now but I sometimes get cut out between words. Any suggestions for how to fix that?

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

You shouldn't have used Driver Booster or any similar, third-party driver finding software as they often give you the wrong drivers.

Go to the Acer support page for your model and download drivers from there. Only Acer have the correct drivers.

 

[ShangWang]

You shouldn't have used Driver Booster or any similar, third-party driver finding software as they often give you the wrong drivers.

Go to the Acer support page for your model and download drivers from there. Only Acer have the correct drivers.

Will do, thanks!

 

[ShangWang]

You shouldn't have used Driver Booster or any similar, third-party driver finding software as they often give you the wrong drivers.

Go to the Acer support page for your model and download drivers from there. Only Acer have the correct drivers.

I checked the acer support page, the latest driver is from 2018. My current driver from Realtek was updated 2020/06/19 and works fine and my mic might be a bit quiet but it still works. Should I still reset to factory drivers?

 

[ShangWang]

You shouldn't have used Driver Booster or any similar, third-party driver finding software as they often give you the wrong drivers.

Go to the Acer support page for your model and download drivers from there. Only Acer have the correct drivers.

If I should reset to the factory audio driver from the website, how should I go with the procedure? Do I just launch the setup to overwrite the new audio driver or do I have to uninstall it first?

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

In your case (where wrong driver may have been installed) it's best to uninstall existing driver first.

 

[ShangWang]

In your case (where wrong driver may have been installed) it's best to uninstall existing driver first.

The setup automatically uninstalls the previous realtek driver for you, however when I was downloading the 2018 version of Realtek high definition audio that is meant for my laptop, it automatically updated and gave me a 2020 version instead. My microphone works fine, but I feel like the quality could be better. Is this automatic update normal and should I worry about it or keep using the driver I have?

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

As Windows Automatic Updates also updates device drivers, it's very possible that's where the 2020 audio driver has come from.
If Device Manager now shows "Realtek High Definition Audio" instead of just "Realtek Audio", that's fine.
As for the microphone audio quality, I frankly don't know.

Was the mic quality poor before you decided to update the audio driver with Driver Booster?

 

[ShangWang]

As Windows Automatic Updates also updates device drivers, it's very possible that's where the 2020 audio driver has come from.
If Device Manager now shows "Realtek High Definition Audio" instead of just "Realtek Audio", that's fine.
As for the microphone audio quality, I frankly don't know.

Was the mic quality poor before you decided to update the audio driver with Driver Booster?

It was originally somewhat poor, but I think that's just the laptop itself, not the microphone. The quality is about the same right now, so I won't touch anything until I have to update it again I suppose, thank for your help.

 

[ShangWang]

As Windows Automatic Updates also updates device drivers, it's very possible that's where the 2020 audio driver has come from.
If Device Manager now shows "Realtek High Definition Audio" instead of just "Realtek Audio", that's fine.
As for the microphone audio quality, I frankly don't know.

Was the mic quality poor before you decided to update the audio driver with Driver Booster?

I am worried because when I had previously attempted to update drivers, nothing would happen until Driver Booster made windows aware of the "Realtek audio" update, so if I ever update through device manager it would update to that version and not the next "High definition" version. I'm not sure if rolling back will bring me to the 2018 version of High definition or it will simply bring me back to "Realtek audio" but I will keep using this current 2020 driver for the moment.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Dump Driver Booster and get drivers manually from Acer website in future, but don't be obsessed about updating drivers if everything is working okay, leave it be.

It might pay you to check microphone input levels in Windows. Open this page and scroll down to:

"The microphone volume is too low or does not appear to be working at all"