Question Recorded system audio has worse quality even if WAV was used as the codec.

[Avc1657]

Ok, guys, so this problem's been pissing me off for months now. What happens is that whenever I record system audio using audacity (realtek drivers installed - the ones provided by Lenovo for my laptop), even if I use a lossless codec, the output audio is just <Mod Edit> I chose a test audio then I used WAV codec to record this audio again and the quality should be the same but it's not. Then if I take the output I just recorded and re-record it, the quality keeps getting worse. But as I said: I'M USING WAV!!! I should mention, though, that if I use the Windows Generic High definition audio driver, this problem doesn't happen, every single output has the same quality as expected, since the codec is WAV.

My laptop is a Lenovo Y720-15IKB and the realtek drivers are the ones provided by Lenovo (version: Realtek Audio_6.0.1.8555), as I said. Win10 21H2 latest version.

What could be happening? Does anybody know?

I'll provide samples of the audios and a print screen from the spectrogram. As for the spectrogram, the first image is the base test audio (audio 1.wav), the second one is the first re-recorded audio (I took the base and re-recorded it - audio 2.wav) and the third one is the re-recorded audio re-recorded again (audio 3.wav).

Samples + spectrogram image: https://www.mediafire.com/file/j8g1yevbu796edw/Samples.zip/file

 

[Lafong]

Is this correct:

You have the problem using Realtek drivers supplied by Lenovo.

You don't have the problem when using Windows generic drivers.

Is there some reason you must use the Realtek drivers?

Or am I misunderstanding you?

I listened to the 3 clips. The first is clearly superior, and the other 2 are much much worse and at lower volume.

 

[Avc1657]

Is this correct:

You have the problem using Realtek drivers supplied by Lenovo.

You don't have the problem when using Windows generic drivers.

Is there some reason you must use the Realtek drivers?

Or am I misunderstanding you?

I listened to the 3 clips. The first is clearly superior, and the other 2 are much much worse and at lower volume.

Yeah, exactly, drivers by lenovo cause me problems whereas the windows one does not.

I would like to use realtek drivers because of Dolby Atmos equalizer which is insane. I installed equalizer APO to use it alongside Windows generic drivers but the quality is not the same, way worse tbh.

The realtek driver itself only cause me problems when recording system audio. I've got a chrome extension that records browser audio (the window itself) and guess what, the problem doesn't happen. It only happens when i record system audio with realtek drivers. I dont understand why, WAV codec should give the same quality.

If i use the windows generic drivers and record the "audio 1.wav" using MP3 96kbps to produce "audio 2.mp3" the quality is better than using realtek and recording to create "audio 2.wav". Idk why that happens, really.