Install drivers for the Windows 7 sound card. Realtek HD Audio driver

This software package of modern drivers is unique due to its positive advantages and a more advanced audio hardware control program. Realtek HD Audio is supported and capable of playing various audio formats with the best, and in some places, reference sound.

You can download the Realtek audio driver for Windows computer for free from the link at the bottom of the article.

This installer is suitable for all Windows systems:

The user does not need to think about compatibility with the installed operating system! This software is fully compatible with all popular versions of Windows OS: 7, 8, 10, Server 2003, Server 2008 (older versions are also supported: Windows 2000, Vista).

Once you have downloaded the audio driver and installed it on Windows OS, the quality of audio recordings will improve quite significantly, the sound will become clearer and more intelligible. This will be especially noticeable if good speakers with a subwoofer are connected to the computer.

But not only true music lovers are able to hear the difference in sound. The sound will also be appreciated by ordinary users who prefer to communicate via Skype, as well as simple listeners of new music via an Internet browser. With such additions to the audio system, listening to your favorite tunes will become much more enjoyable, and voice communication with friends on the Internet will be richer and of higher quality.

The realtek audio driver includes the Sound Effect Manager and Soundman applications. They match well with Direct Sound 3D, I3DL2, A3D.


The interface of the realtek program of this assembly is extremely clear and can be understood by any user, even those who are remotely versed in the issues of installing and configuring programs. There is an excellent settings system, thanks to which you can adjust the sound to your liking.

Realtek sound has an excellent ten-band equalizer and advanced gaming system capabilities with emulation of twenty-six sound environments. Also, this program supports musical instruments with MIDI and MPU401 drivers.


The provided set of drivers significantly improves the sound quality of the audio/video used. Its undoubtedly distinctive qualities and advantages deserve attention.

After installing Realtek HD Audio on your computer, you will certainly appreciate its capabilities and the improved sound quality of your player.

A very big advantage of this driver package for Windows is the ability to download and install them for free. Therefore, each user will be able to get the most out of their audio system without extra costs.

Here it is not difficult to download Realtek High Definition Audio Driver Audio Driver to your computer for installation or reinstallation. The freely distributed Realtek HD software has all the necessary functionality for the correct and fast operation of audio-video players when playing music, video clips, movies, TV series, online TV, computer games, as well as programs for working with microphones, synthesizers, and musical instruments. Positive ratings, reviews and comments on social networks, forums and other Internet resources, as well as tips on how to download Realtek HD sound drivers for Windows 10, 8.. Link: website/ru/drivers/realtekhd

Briefly about Realtek HD

Realtek audio chips are installed in many computers, laptops, and netbooks. Drivers High Definition Audio from Realtek work with PCI audio cards, peripheral audio devices, and built-in audio processors. Anyone can successfully download Realtek High Definition Audio Driver for Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, as well as Vista, or XP SP 3 (32-bit and 64-bit) for free and install it on a PC without any effort or spending a lot of time . These drivers will be useful to all users who have just installed or decided to reinstall Windows. If you experience difficulties with sound, or it does not play at all, then updating the Realtek High Definition Audio Driver will come in handy.

Realtek HD interface and functionality

The interface, understandable even for a beginner, allows you to quickly understand the settings and get down to business. The fact that the Realtek driver management is correctly Russified allows you not to waste time translating and studying the interface, menus, windows, settings and capabilities.

First, you will need to download, install or update the sound card drivers, and when the corresponding sound driver is installed, after rebooting, start working with multimedia data, whatever it may be. The functionality of Realtek High Definition Audio Driver allows you to watch video clips, movies or online TV, listen to music, play computer toys, use a microphone to record speech, sing and voice communication. The benefits of Realtek HD Audio Driver for Windows include:

Friendly interface and convenient settings,
- work with all current audio formats,
- automatic configuration of Plug and Play devices,
- support for DirectSound 3 D, A 3D and I3D L2, Soundman and SoundEffect,
- wide frequency bandwidth,
- support for stereo recordings 24 bit / 192 kHz and multi-channel 5.1 and 7.1 Dolby Digital,
- 10-band equalizer for perfect sound tuning,
- emulation of audio environments in computer games,
- compatibility with various electronic musical instruments,
- error-free speech recognition when using appropriate software.

As a result of regular updates to Realtek Audio Driver HD, the quality and capabilities are constantly improved. We recommend, without leaving the site now, to download Realtek High Definition Audio Driver for free to enjoy good sound in films, TV series, TV programs, video clips, CD, DVD, FLAC, MP3 music, playing games, using musical instruments and microphones, for example to record an original song and music or sing karaoke.

How to download Realtek the smart way

It’s not enough to just download free Realtek HD sound drivers for Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP SP 3 (x86 and x64) to your computer or laptop. To run the Realtek HD audio driver, you need the appropriate hardware, that is, your computer must use a compatible chip. You can find out what kind of sound card or chip is installed in your computer visually by inspecting the computer's boards, or, without opening the case, in the Hardware section of the Control Panel of the Windows operating system, or using specialized software, for example, DriverPack Solution. The following markings are suitable: ALC260 - ALC275, ALC660 - ALC670, ALC882 - ALC889 and the like. The markings ALC101, ALC201 - ALC203 (A), ALC250, ALC650 - ALC658, ALC850, VIA686, VIA8233, VIA8233A indicate that you will need to download Realtek AC97 for Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, Vista, as well as XP SP 3 ( 32-bit and 64-bit), also from Realtek.

Select a driver according to your OS from the list below. Software for working with a sound card is installed in the same way as ordinary software. For full operation you need to restart your computer. The package includes Realtek Soundman, Sound Effect and Media Player.

(there is a separate article) on the system unit? I had all this and it worked before reinstalling the system. A few days ago I had to reinstall Windows 7 and now there is no sound, the realtek manager is gone and the front soundbar is not working. I can't find the driver CD. You can, of course, call a specialist, but the prices are expensive, and I’m studying at school, and I want to figure it all out myself, because I managed to install the operating system myself. Edik.

Letter No. 2. I have a problem: I reinstalled the operating system and immediately a question arose how to install sound driver, the Windows 7 operating system found all other devices and the drivers were installed automatically, this can be seen in the device manager, but instead of my audio device it was written Audio device on the High Definition Audio bus and that’s it. According to your article, I determined - Device instance code (equipment ID) went to www.devid.info, pasted into the search field

HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0883&SUBSYS_1043829F&REV_1000 and clicked Search, after a few seconds the following result was obtained:

Realtek High Definition Audio
Manufacturer: Realtek Semiconductor Corp.

Operating system: Windows XP, Vista

I decided to call the wizard and he very simply installed the sound driver for me from his disk, but the Realtek manager did not appear for me and he and I were unable to turn on the front sound panel, although before reinstalling the system it worked and I connected it to it headphones. Tell me how to do everything right, you are also a master. Ilya.

How to install a sound driver

Note: Friends, in general there is a rule, immediately after installing the operating system, go to the website of your motherboard and download all the drivers (sound, network, etc.) from there, we even have a detailed article on this topic. If for some reason this did not work out for you, you can download the sound driver directly from the website of the manufacturer of the sound card built into your motherboard; in most cases, it will be a Realtek sound card, that is, read everything that is written below.

We take a computer with the same integrated (built-in) Realtek sound card into the motherboard in the form of a microcircuit, like our reader, and a newly installed operating system and Windows 7 without sound drivers (I deliberately did not install the driver for the sound device, we’ll install it together with you).
In device manager I have an item Sound, video and gaming devices and under it is a Device supporting High Definition Audio, indicating that the system contains a new generation audio device that supports the high-definition audio standard HD Audio, but there is no sound in the system, since a driver is not installed for this device.

Note: On older motherboards, instead of High Definition Audio, there may be AC’97, an outdated standard audio codec developed by Intel in 1997. But the sound subsystem built into our motherboard operates according to a newer standard - High Definition Audio or HD Audio. Intel High Definition Audio is a relatively new specification for audio codecs, developed by Intel in 2004, characterized by improved digital sound quality, an increased number of channels, and a higher bandwidth compared to AC"97.

  • We determine the exact name of our sound card and, accordingly, exactly what driver we need.
  • We find the driver on the official website of our sound card, download it and install it, if it is a realtek sound card driver, it must be accompanied by the official driver realtek manager will also be installed(no need to download it separately).
  • In order for the front sound panel to work, we have to configure realtek manager, this is not difficult and in most cases is enough for the front sound panel to function normally. If we fail, we will have to enter the BIOS and set the Front Panel Type parameter - from HD Audio to AC-97 (all details below).

During the existence of the site, question How to install the driver for sound, was asked to me countless times, in addition, before writing the article, I specifically observed how an ordinary user searches for drivers on the Internet and came to the conclusion. People want to find drivers anywhere, but not on the official website of the device manufacturer. Why is this happening?

If the situation is, for example, with drivers for a video card, then it’s relatively simple, everyone knows about the existence of a Russian-language site, where everything is very simple and clear and even has its own program, by running which you can easily find out the exact name of your video card and select the necessary driver there . Naturally, on such a site it is not difficult for an ordinary user to download the required driver, this is undoubtedly a big plus for the creators of this site.

The situation is different with sound drivers, although here, too, there are only a few main manufacturers and the most important one, in my opinion, is Realtek; personally, I most often have to deal with searching for and installing drivers from this particular manufacturer. Indeed, the website www.realtek.com freezes periodically and does not support the Russian language, but you can still download drivers from it; personally, I have always succeeded.

Of course, first of all you need to know the name of your sound card. To accurately determine the name of almost any device connected to the motherboard, including built-in and discrete sound cards, you can use a simple, but nevertheless irreplaceable (for example, in my work) program called AIDA64 or you can use exactly the same Everest utility .

More exotic methods of determining the name of devices and searching for drivers for them by ID equipment code, using the site pcidatabase.com and www.devid.info, are given in our article How to find a driver by device code(link to the article above), we will not repeat ourselves, if everything written below does not help, you can read it.

So, let’s go to the official website of the AIDA64 program. Having been free in the recent past, it recently became paid, but you don’t need to buy it right away. For the first 30 days, the developer gives us the opportunity to use the program without any restrictions. It seems to me that this time is more than enough for us to determine the name of the device we need. If you like the program, then of course you can buy it.
On the official website of our program http://www.aida64.com/ click on the Download button,

You can download the program in the installer or in the archive, let's download it in the archive, click on AIDA64 Extreme Edition Trial version, ZIP package , Download .

We’ve downloaded it, now let’s unzip our program into some folder,

go to this folder, then run the file aida64.exe and our program starts

In the main program window, click Computer.

then Summary information

and we see everything that is installed inside the system unit: the name of the motherboard and its chipset, and we also see the name of the processor, video adapter, BIOS type, and so on.

Sound card as we see - Realtek ALC883 High Definition Audio.

Half the job is done, go to the official Realtek website - www.realtek.com. Many users complain that the Realtek website does not support the Russian language; you can get out of this situation by using the Google Chrome browser, it will easily translate everything for you.

Click Downloads

and choose High Definition Audio Codecs (Software)


Check the box I accept to the above and click Next


Why I chose High Definition Audio Codecs (Software) drivers. Because these Realtek sound drivers are universal in their kind. They support all new audio formats and are suitable for almost all Realtek High Definition Audio sound cards, including ours (highlighted in red). These drivers are intended for operating systems: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7/8 32-64bit.

  • 1. Support Vista/Windows 7 WHQL: ALC882, ALC883, ALC885, ALC886, ALC887, ALC888, ALC889, ALC892, ALC899, ALC861VD, ALC660, ALC662, ALC663, ALC665, ALC670, ALC680 ALC260, ALC262,ALC267,ALC268,ALC269, ALC270, ALC272, ALC273, ALC275
  • 2. Support Windows 2000/XP WHQL: ALC880, ALC882, ALC883, ALC885, ALC886, ALC887, ALC888, ALC889, ALC892, ALC899, ALC861VC, ALC861VD, ALC660, ALC662, ALC663, ALC670, , ALC680 ALC260, ALC262, ALC267, ALC268, ALC269, ALC270, ALC272, ALC273, ALC275
In this window, you and I need to select the version of the sound driver installer to download, if you and I have one of the listed 32-bit operating systems installed: Vista, Windows7, Windows 8, then click on the first Description (description) of the table
If we have one of the 64-bit systems installed - Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, then click on the second Description of the table.
Accordingly, if you have 32-bit Windows 2000, Windows XP/2003 (32/64 bits) installed, then select the seventh position.

We have chosen our version of the operating system, for example, we have Windows 7-64-bit installed, now we select Site from which we will download, you can select any one, for example, located in China and left-click on it once.

Download the driver and run it.

Drivers are being installed into the operating system.

and Realtek Manager is installed along with the drivers. After restarting the computer, we will have sound in Windows.

In the device manager we see the version of our driver, it is the latest.

Read our next article -. Very convenient, I recommend it!

The software that manages the sound card must be updated after installing the system, upgrading the computer - that is, installing a new discrete sound card, and also if the existing sound driver becomes outdated. In addition, driver installation may be required if your personal computer is infected with viruses that can easily damage system files, including driver files.

There are three ways to install drivers:

  • from the disk that comes with the motherboard (if the sound card is built-in) or with a discrete sound card;
  • by downloading software from the equipment manufacturer’s website;
  • by downloading Windows updates using the standard automatic update tool.

In any case, installing drivers will help in such cases as loss of sound in the Realtek manager or inoperability of the front panel of the computer, on which there are additional audio jacks for headphones and a microphone.

Sequence of actions for installing the driver

It is very easy to understand that the system lacks sound drivers. Firstly, when you turn on music or other audio files, the speakers will be silent. Secondly, on the desktop panel, next to the clock, the volume control icon will have a red cross and the caption “Output device not installed.” If these symptoms occur on your computer, you will need to find and install the appropriate software. Regardless of the version of the Windows operating system - XP, 7, 8 or 10 - the steps will be the same.

If you have a disk with drivers, no problems will arise - you just need to insert it into the computer's disk drive, the installation will start automatically. After it is completed, you just need to restart your computer and everything will work.

If there is no disk, you will have to download drivers from the website of the sound card or motherboard manufacturer. How to do it?

The first step is to determine the model of your existing sound card. If it is built-in, then most likely it is one of the Realtek products that are installed on almost all computers running the Windows operating system. By downloading drivers for a sound card from this company, you can easily install the software on a system of any version. If you encounter problems with the download, you can always try installing drivers using Windows automatic updates. How to do this will be discussed below.

Determining the sound card model

To understand which model of built-in sound card is installed in your computer, you need to do the following:

  • open "My Computer", right-click in any empty space of the window that opens, select "Properties";
  • in the menu on the right, find the “Device Manager” column;
  • In the device manager, find the item "Sound, video and game devices."

This menu contains a list of devices used to output sound. All of them are signed with the name of the technology that they use to convert information. In modern computers, this is High Definition Audio, a technology developed by Intel and used to produce high-definition sound. Older machines may instead use the AC'97 standard, which is used by devices that were built into motherboards before 2004. In any case, it will be immediately clear if sound devices do not work due to the lack of a driver.

After determining the “modernity” of the sound card, we perform the following operations:

  • determining a specific sound card model;
  • search and download drivers from the manufacturer’s official website;
  • setting up control software.

Let's look at these steps in more detail.

Step 1. Find out the card model

How do ordinary users find the necessary drivers? Most often, all drivers are installed from the disk that comes with the computer, and then are automatically updated either by the system itself or by software from the equipment manufacturer - this is what happens, for example, with drivers for video cards from Nvidia. If an emergency situation arises, the user gets lost and starts looking for drivers anywhere but where they need them.

Special problems are associated with the sound card. It may be more difficult to find drivers for them due to the fact that few people know what kind of card is installed in their computer - after all, its name is not written on a beautiful box in capital letters, like video cards. And the Realtek website itself can be intimidating with its unfriendly design and lack of a Russian-language interface. But if you understand everything, installing the driver will not seem such a difficult operation.

Information about the built-in sound card, although not the most secret, is not available for obtaining using any of the standard Windows tools, while the name of the video card or processor can be obtained in just two clicks. How can you identify your sound card?

This will require the installation of third-party programs. Obtaining the most complete information about the contents of the system unit can be provided by one of a wide list of programs:

  • Everest;
  • CPU-Z;
  • AIDA64 and many others.

All of them are quite easy to use, free or have a fairly long free trial period, and are quick to download and install.

So, to find out the sound card model, you will have to do the following:

  1. In any search engine we type the name of one of the programs, for example AIDA64.
  2. One of the first results of the search engine should be a link to the official website of the program.
  3. Let's go to this site. It is entirely in English, but is quite easy to navigate, since all links to the necessary pages are presented in the form of graphic icons.
  4. Find and click on the Download button.
  5. On the page that opens, select one of the latest versions (the latest versions are located higher in the list of available ones) and download it either as an executable file or in the form of a ZIP archive. There is no difference other than the file size.
  6. After the download is complete, either immediately run the .exe file, or unpack the archive into any folder and run the extracted file aida64.exe. The program will start immediately, no installation required.
  7. In the main menu of the program there are many icons, among which you need to select the “Computer” item.
  8. Next, select the “Summary Information” item.
  9. A long list of all the equipment on board the computer will appear, the names of some of which will not be determined in the trial version of the program, but we don’t need them now. In the "Multimedia" menu, one of the first items will contain exactly the information you are looking for - the name of the sound card like Realtex XXX, where XXX is an alphanumeric code corresponding to a specific model.
  10. That's all, the necessary information has been received, the program can be closed. As you can see, the 30-day trial period was enough.

    Step 2: Finding the right driver

    Having found out the sound card model, the user can only find the necessary driver for it, download it and install it. To do this, you need to go to the official Realtek website, which can be easily found using any search engine.

    The site is again in English, but this time with almost no graphics. Google will help you parse the text, and immediately after landing on the site it will offer to translate all the text into Russian.

    Follow the Downloads link and select High Definition Audio Codecs (Software). On the page that opens, check the box indicating that you agree to the terms and conditions and click the Next button. All that remains is to select the desired version for your system in the list that appears and download it by clicking on one of the links on the right (there is no difference between them, here you select the server from which the file will be downloaded).

    After the download is complete, open the driver installer. Click the “Next” button until everything is finished. At the end of the installation, the computer restarts.

    So, a logical question arises: why bother with names if there is only one driver for everything? This was to ensure that the computer was using standard hardware. If instead of HD Audio you see AC"97 technology in the device manager or something other than Realtek in the AIDA64 program, you will have to download other drivers. The essence will not change - only the names.

    Step 3: Setup

    Along with the driver, the Realtek manager will be installed, which is used to configure the equipment. But this is a topic for a separate article.

    The driver installation is now complete. After restarting the computer, the speakers should sound as before. To be sure, we check whether the volume setting works, and also see if the sound card appears in the device manager.

Realtek High Definition Audio Drivers- without exaggeration, the most popular and one of the best driver packages that are needed to play sounds, music and other various audio files for an operating system running Windows.

Realtek High Definition Audio Codec Pack supports digital stereo audio at up to 24-bit/192 kHz resolution, as well as 5.1-channel Dolby Digital audio. This driver package installs like a regular Windows program and may require a reboot to apply the new settings.

HD Audio Codec available for downloads of 32-bit or 64-bit Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10 with Realtek controllers.

Realtek is a popular sound card driver that is needed for many branded computers and motherboards. Users of Windows XP, 2000 and 2003 especially need this driver, since automatic installation of the sound card driver in the OS is not provided.

This driver package has a number of advantages over AC’97 and other similar packages:

Plug and Play and various audio systems that support this technology.

Supports Realtek Sound Effect Manag and Realtek Soundman.

The driver supports the following technologies: Direct Sound 3D, A3D and I3DL2.

Ability to recognize electronic musical instruments thanks to the built-in MPU401 MIDI driver.

Extensive support for new audio formats.

The driver has as many as ten equalizer bands that will allow even the most demanding user to customize the sound.

It can recognize speech and its input practically without errors.

Clear interface. Even a beginner can figure out the driver settings.

Game lovers will also be pleased, as HD Audio Drivers have built-in emulation of 26 sound environments.

Built-in Realtek Media Player.

High, high-quality, stable transmission frequency

In general, if you want to get the highest quality sound when playing various games, playing musical instruments, watching movies and TV series, then by installing this driver package you will get what you want.

Audio drivers from Realtek are still supported by developers and with each update its capabilities are only expanded and improved.

Realtek HD Audio Drivers are developed in two main versions:

The first has support for the following Windows 2000/XP/2003 operating systems and runs on chipsets: ALC880, ALC882, ALC883, ALC885, ALC888, ALC861VC, ALC861VD, ALC660, ALC662, ALC260, ALC262, ALC267, ALC268 and ALC269

The second version is designed for newer operating systems Windows Vista/7/8/8.1/10. This version has support for chips such as ALC882, ALC883, ALC885, ALC888, ALC861VD, ALC660, ALC662, ALC260, ALC262, ALC267, ALC268 and ALC269.

The driver is compatible with the following OS:

  • Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit)
  • Microsoft Windows 10 (32-bit)
  • Microsoft Windows 8.1 (64-bit)
  • Microsoft Windows 8.1 (32-bit)
  • Microsoft Windows 8 (64-bit)
  • Microsoft Windows 8 (32-bit)
  • Microsoft Windows 7 (64-bit)
  • Microsoft Windows 7 (32-bit)
  • Microsoft Windows Vista (64-bit)
  • Microsoft Windows Vista
  • Microsoft Windows XP

Download drivers v2.82 (08/08/2017):

  • (Vista/7/8/8.1/10) 32-bit (Executable file) (168 MB)
    (Vista/7/8/8.1/10) 64-bit (Executable file) (254 MB)
  • Driver only (Executable file) (412 MB)
  • Driver only (ZIP file) (417 MB)
  • (30.5 MB)

Download via torrent

  • (0.1 MB)

Download previous version v2.81:

  • (Vista/7/8/8.1/10) 32/64-bit (168 MB)
  • (Vista/7/8/8.1/10) 64-bit (207 MB)