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So I have a HP laptop with IDT HD audio, and I can get the driver to install fine, but the pitch of sounds is wrong. It's either too high pitched or too low pitched, and I can't stand it. I don't have this issue with anything Vista+, but I almost always use the superior Windows HD audio drivers there.

I've tried the Shorthorn backported HD audio drivers, but I've had no luck getting those working. I can get the latest drivers installed and the device recognized, but there's nothing being outputted.

I'm wondering if there's anyone else having an issue like this, and if there's anything that can be done to fix it.

what hardware ID does the audio device reports?
It seems VirtualBox emulates an also (sigmatel) IDT HD audio card, so working drivers for VirtualBox in HDA mode should also theoretically work with your non-virtual device too. There aren't many compatible drivers, but maybe that could get you closer to a solution.

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=36840
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=39802

blueclouds8666 wrote: *

13 Feb 2021, 02:21

what hardware ID does the audio device reports?
It seems VirtualBox emulates an also (sigmatel) IDT HD audio card, so working drivers for VirtualBox in HDA mode should also theoretically work with your non-virtual device too. There aren't many compatible drivers, but maybe that could get you closer to a solution.

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=36840
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=39802

Broke my install of XP, so here's the ID from 7.
HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_111D&DEV_7605&SUBSYS_103C176C&REV_1001

I'm having this exact same issue, albeit with Conexant SmartAudio HD on an OptiPlex 3010 - everything's slightly lower-pitched than it should be (unsure if the tempo is affected, but I don't think it's having a PAL 50Hz moment, lol). I believe it somewhat relates to the fact HDA was something that came later on in Server 2003/XP x64's life and is more rough around the edges than it is in Vista or later.

Heck, I've known the nForce motherboards to have issues where it won't play at all via HDMI, while my audio card cuts out constantly under XP (and somewhat under Vista and later, but nowhere near as awfully). Intel HD won't work AT ALL under XP x64 to my knowledge, over HDMI (while it does on x86). It's a case of the HDA internal drivers being rather preliminary on x64 XP compared to x86, as well as the driver support being even patchier - you're best off using an aux cable and tuning your audio configuration to match what you want more accurately, which is ideal in any case to be completely honest.

R3n wrote: *

13 Feb 2021, 06:00

Broke my install of XP, so here's the ID from 7.
HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_111D&DEV_7605&SUBSYS_103C176C&REV_1001

The driver seems to be not available for XP and Vista, only 7 and higher

You know what, I just realized I have the same issue on my Thinkpad x100e running Windows xp SP3. I believe it's using Realtek audio drivers. If not, maybe Coxenant or Soundmax. The Windows xp startup and shutdown sounds sound noticeably lower-pitched. I don't know about the audio that isn't system sounds, that hasn't bothered me so far. I'll check one day.

So, I've reinstalled XP, and have a finally(?) working updated copy, and still have the issue. I'll do recording later, as I've been up for about 18 hours.

I'm now convinced it's the drivers at fault in your case. The pitch seems to normalise itself with a Conexant audio driver and post-SP2 updates.
Probably nothing you can do, though you should probably monitor the differences between a non-updated and an updated install. As for recording, plug an aux cable in, would make life much easier.

I've finally recorded the audio for it, both are XP sound files being played from a media player, but one is from Vista, the other XP.

I recommend you use Audacity to look at the audio because it helps you play two sounds one after another.

I think i also had those problems before, it went up to the correct pitch when i changed the MIDI device for some reason, and it played MP3's at the correct pitch. Probably because the audio device was overloaded that it couldn't play the wav files correctly

ChansLeChan wrote: *

24 Feb 2021, 14:47

I think i also had those problems before, it went up to the correct pitch when i changed the MIDI device for some reason, and it played MP3's at the correct pitch. Probably because the audio device was overloaded that it couldn't play the wav files correctly

That appears to describe my issue. I was wondering why MP3, M4A, and CD Audio sounded fine, which is what made me think that the pitch was varying over time, but now I know it just effects .wav files.

I only have one MIDI audio device though.

Well that's a rather interesting find.
Wonder if tweaking the sampling rate of the audio output would help matters in your case then?

@CLC, what sound card do you have, just out of curiosity?

Compa wrote: *

01 Mar 2021, 08:18

Well that's a rather interesting find.
Wonder if tweaking the sampling rate of the audio output would help matters in your case then?

@CLC, what sound card do you have, just out of curiosity?

Setting sample rate conversion quality to good appears to fix the pitch issues, but i can still detect slight differences between a .mp3 and a .wav, and the .mp3 sounds better, however I need to do more testing.

I would prefer the switching the midi device solution, but even after testing some custom midi drivers, I was unable to get another option, and I found nothing on deleting the old driver.

R3n wrote: *

01 Mar 2021, 13:04

Compa wrote: *

01 Mar 2021, 08:18

Well that's a rather interesting find.
Wonder if tweaking the sampling rate of the audio output would help matters in your case then?

@CLC, what sound card do you have, just out of curiosity?

Setting sample rate conversion quality to good appears to fix the pitch issues, but i can still detect slight differences between a .mp3 and a .wav, and the .mp3 sounds better, however I need to do more testing.

I would prefer the switching the midi device solution, but even after testing some custom midi drivers, I was unable to get another option, and I found nothing on deleting the old driver.

I've done a few more tests, with the best quality, the pitch depends on the .wav file. 44100 and possibly higher sound the same between the settings. 22050 sounds worse than if I export a 44100 or MP3 version of the sound, and with best settings, the pitch is lower.

One oddity is the ImgBurn success sound. On best settings it sounds low quality and higher pitched, the exported .mp3 has the same quality but correct pitch. With good settings, the .wav has higher quality than the .mp3 even though the .mp3 is 320kbps, and both have correct pitch.

I also have some 24bit 96khz flac files, I don't know if they're too different to .wav, but I don't have a way of really exporting a low quality flac. They sound the same between good and best quality.

It's probably related to the bitrate and/or sampling rate of the file in question for the ImgBurn success sound. (I'm surprised that thing isn't a meme yet.)