Audio Issues

1. I have not removed or installed anything new on my PC other than Win 11 cumulative update performed on 8-14-25.
2. At some point my audio out of my Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 THX became messed up.
3. Sound out of right speaker only, level is very low, it's all muffled, and like full bass.
4. The problem would come and go at will, sometimes it was good, then it would be messed up.
5. Currently I have one game installed, FS25 which has never caused problems in the past.
6. Lately sound is messed up all the time, I removed all Creative drivers (restarted), connected my speakers to my motherboards 3.5 audio out (Realtek), same audio issues.
7. SB G8 USB audio card lets me switch between speakers and headset, audio from headset is always good.
8. Audio is messed up from all sources, game, browsers, files on my PC, etc.

I have not had good audio through my speakers in about (3) days with multiple restarts or cold boots.
I connected the speakers to my laptop twice; audio was good both times.
I have not tried yet, but I have "never" had good results rolling back windows updates, either the rollback does not fix anything, or the rollback fails.

Sys Specs:

ASRock X870 PRO RS WiFi
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
Memory - 64GB (32GBx2) - G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo AMD EXPO Model F5-6000J3040G32GX2-TZ5NR
SSD - Crucial T700 Gen5 NVME M.2 SSD 2280 2TB PCI-Express 5.0
Sapphire NITRO+ RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X
Corsair HX1200 1200 Watt Power Supply
NZXT Kraken Z73 360 Liquid CPU Cooler
Sound Blaster G8 USB sound - Mobo = 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC1220 Audio Codec)
MSI MPG 321CURX QD-OLED 32" UHD 240Hz Curved Gaming Monitor
Case - Corsair 7000D Airflow
Win 11 Pro 64bit

Check the cables from speaker so Sound card

@Gunner

I have the Klipsch Pro Media speakers too.
Neither the speakers or my system, were affected by the Aug 14th update.
So I would look for other causes.

And... here's ten points just for filling out your computer specs.

Issue has nothing to do with connections of cables, one of the first things I checked.

BTW, at command prompt I ran a system scan, windows found some corrupt files, but this almost always happens as 11 is buggy.
Ran online cleanup-image restore health, restore finished with success, fixed nothing.

Just because your update didn't cause issues does not mean that updates affect everyone's system the same, my hardware and drivers / apps are totally different than yours Ghot, that's why PC's are so much harder to code for, it all the endless variables each system has.

If you have corrupted files, it is not Windows 11 or any other OS's problems.
It is most likely that your drive has Bad Sectors and the data that is on those sectors is corrupt.
Download DiskGenius and or Crystal Disk Info. both in my signature View the SMART Info for each of your drives separately If it is any less than GOOD the drive needs to be replaced.
You can also run a Surface Scan (View and Repair Bad Sectors) in DiskGenius

Spunk please read all of my original post, not going to find any bad sectors on SSD - Crucial T700 Gen5 NVME M.2.

In older or cheaper PC sound technologies, speakers and headphones use the same elctrical signal, headphones just don't have amplifier and they have higher impedance. Connecting the headphones flips a circuit and the same output is directed to the headphones instead of the speakers, or either the headphones are detected and you can set what happens. If there're differences like one of them sounding well and the other not, it's for the devices themselves or for the cables.

In one of my setups, this system doesn't work or is absent. The headphones have good sound if the speakers are off, and the speakers sound well if the headphones aren't connected, but using both at the same time produces the sound you describe. This could be the situation with your onboard sound, or either the sound cables and connections in your case aren't in good shape (in my case, it's an ancient PCI model w/o proper or modern frontal sound sytem, although it can be extracted from some pins with an ad hoc connector that I had to buy independently, for what is it and the low price I paid I think I've got a good result, the cards's a SB X-Fi XtremeMusic in an old Windows 7 system).

Your Sound Blaster G8 is more complicated b/c it has a very special amplifier that isn't valid for headphones, hence you have to choose manually which amplifier you use. I suspect the amplifier for speakers isn't working well.

If it helps, for installing a modern SB Audigy FX v2 in my most powerful computer (AMD FX8350 in a 970 board) with Windows 10, I uninstalled the onboard sound drivers, rebooted to the BIOS, disabled onboard sound (so I don't have a Realtek sound solution disabled or anything, it just doesn't exist for Windows, I'll confirm this when I use the said computer next time and I'll correct it if needed), booted up to Windows "for cleanness", shut down, installed the card, booted up and installed the drivers.

JLArranz;
The SB G8 is setup to handle headset or speakers, it has a switch that just turns one on and the other off, just like a TV when you switch the source for different video inputs.
Audio came back to my speakers today, all sudden it just started working, not reboots nothing.

As far as the Realtek onboard sound which has the same audio issues, only the speakers are connected, the headphones are not connected. This acts more like some type of driver conflict, I have run the same setup for (2) years on this PC, and it was right after I updated windows on the 14th that the problem started. I was watching some videos on youtube, audio was good, notification popped up for restart for windows update, I restarted, went into my game, audio was messed up. Exited the game and every audio source was messed up. Left the house, came back about (5) hours later and the audio was fine. This is just what it does, its like a switch is flipped, one minute audio is good, then its not.

Do you have a back up you can revert to?

Gunner said:

Spunk please read all of my original post, not going to find any bad sectors on SSD - Crucial T700 Gen5 NVME M.2.

Click to expand...

I have read your OP and this whole thread.
Even NVME and M.2 drives get bad sectors. It only takes a few minutes to scan your drives with the mentioned software. It may pass all tests, but why not check just to make sure?

Hi @Gunner

Have you run an audio latency monitor testing app on your system? Latency issues affecting the audio stack is a common cause of sound issues.