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Surface Book 3 Low Volume Issue. Any fixes???

Anonymous
2021-04-16T06:07:34+00:00

I have been having the issue of low volume levels from this product ever since I bought it. There has not been an update that has fixed this issue and I have seen that other people have been having the same problems as me. When video streaming through popular services, such as Netflix, on google chrome I have found that the speakers have been very quiet. When I observe the audio levels of the computer while streaming (seen through the Image shown)

It can be seen that the speakers levels are not even reaching half of their abilities during the loudest part of the movie I am playing. This trend can be seen with every application or video I am streaming that creates sound. While doing this test I have the volume of the computer and application fully turned up and I have checked through settings to ensure no other applications are causing this sound reduction. When I then use the "test speakers" function found in settings the levels of the speakers go much higher than ever seen while I video stream. This shows that the issue is software-driven and not a hardware problem.

This is a very annoying issue and from what I have gathered it seems to me that this is a software problem that is widespread and not only found to my own device. I noticed this problem immediately from the moment a bought this laptop and I have been waiting for a fix, but there hasn't been one in the many months that I have owned this. As Microsoft is both the owner of this laptop and the operating system that it runs on I would not expect these types of issues to last as long as they have in my product. 

If anyone has found any solutions to this I would be very grateful if you could share it with me and if you are having the same problem make sure to also tell Microsoft in hopes that they will fix it.

Thank you!

Surface | Surface Book | Sound and camera

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-06-23T09:16:49+00:00

    I had same sound card volume issue with Surface Book 3. I found that, at least for me, it is was due to the selection of different version of sound card driver. It seems that the operating system could not automatically choose the latest driver even though the driver has been downloaded and could be seen from Device Manager. Therefore, it is a rather straightforward fix for me:

    Step 0: Get your Surface Book 3 updated by "Windows Update" inside "Settings" window.

    Image

    Step 1: Right-click Windows button at the low-left corner of the desktop and go into "Device Manager".

    Image

    Step 2: Go to "Sound, video and game controllers" and right-click "Realtek High Definition Audio(SST)" and choose "Update Driver".

    Image

    Step 3: Inside "Update Drivers" window choose "Browse my computer for drivers".

    Image

    Step 4: Choose "Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer" and click "Next".

    Step 5: Choose the latest version of available driver for your Realtek audio device and click "Next". . (as of June 2021 I have driver ver. 6.0.8936 installed on my Surface Book 3)

    Image

    Step 6: If the driver was updated successfully(the sound will be muted for a moment), it would ask you to restart your computer before the latest driver could be used. For me, the above steps got my Surface Book 3's issue of "sound volume too low" solved.

    Image

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-08-26T01:52:34+00:00

    Thank you Qing Wei, this worked great!

    I had same sound card volume issue with Surface Book 3. I found that, at least for me, it is was due to the selection of different version of sound card driver. It seems that the operating system could not automatically choose the latest driver even though the driver has been downloaded and could be seen from Device Manager. Therefore, it is a rather straightforward fix for me:

    Step 0: Get your Surface Book 3 updated by "Windows Update" inside "Settings" window.

    Image

    Step 1: Right-click Windows button at the low-left corner of the desktop and go into "Device Manager".

    Image

    Step 2: Go to "Sound, video and game controllers" and right-click "Realtek High Definition Audio(SST)" and choose "Update Driver".

    Image

    Step 3: Inside "Update Drivers" window choose "Browse my computer for drivers".

    Image

    Step 4: Choose "Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer" and click "Next".

    Image

    Step 5: Choose the latest version of available driver for your Realtek audio device and click "Next". . (as of June 2021 I have driver ver. 6.0.8936 installed on my Surface Book 3)

    Image

    Step 6: If the driver was updated successfully(the sound will be muted for a moment), it would ask you to restart your computer before the latest driver could be used. For me, the above steps got my Surface Book 3's issue of "sound volume too low" solved.

    Image

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-04-17T03:20:16+00:00

    Hi Jake_62,

    Thanks for reaching out to Microsoft Community and posting your inquiry. We appreciate the effort in providing a clear photo of the issue. 

    We suggest the methods below:

    • Run Surface Diagnostic Toolkit and check Windows Update

    • Turn off the Spatial Sound. On the Taskbar, Right Click the volume Icon and turn off Spatial Sounds

    • If the issue persists, download the realtek audio app and adjust the default volume, sound effects, and the speaker configuration on the app then observe if the issue persists. 

    • Manually install the driver's package. Check the specific OS build of your Windows Settings> System> About. Download the driver and firmware for Surface, choose Surface Book 3. and click download on the next page. Please choose the .msi file that matches your current OS Build and click Next. After the download, runand installthe .msi then Restart the Surface Device.

    Keep us updated by replying on this thread.

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-04-17T09:45:00+00:00

    Hi John Neil_J,

    Thank you very much for the helpful advice and fast response time!

    I am having difficulties finding the Realtek audio app. It seems that it no longer exists on the Microsoft store when I normally search it. I was able to find a link to it here that somehow brought me to its download page when my searches failed. I then got an error (Code: 0x803FB005) upon my attempt to download it. This seems to be an error only associated with this download. So I was wondering if you knew where I could find the download for that application. Would it be an application that I would need to download through their website?

    Thanks again for the help.

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  5. Anonymous
    2021-04-20T00:38:28+00:00

    You're welcome, Jake_62. That's the app that needs to be downloaded. Try to check if the antivirus (if you have a third party antivirus) is blocking the download otherwise, reset the Windows Store using the Command Prompt. Go to the Search bar > Search for CMD or command prompt > Right-click the CMD > Run as Administrator > Then type in the command WSRESET.EXE hit enter then reboot the device. Try to download the app again and if the issue persists, proceed with the other steps above.

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