XPS 15 9570, Realtek update, boosted bass distorted level

Nope, I take that back. Further listening after removing this setting is showing a still pretty clear difference in dynamics. The bass is no longer boosted but the frequency response seems like just a complete and utter mess. Audio that used to be clean through my ~$400 headphones now sounds distorted and difficult to hear. 

I paid $2,000 for a Dell laptop that apparently can't play music properly. And there is no response from any of the team. Sigh. Might be time to just push for a refund and go to a new manufacturer.

Edit: OK. So using a tone tester and side by side comparisons across multiple devices with high quality audio formats I've pinpointed significant distortion on any sound under 100Hz. The distortion is so bad that it is effectively compressing other frequencies and ruining the audio quality of anything played higher than say 20 - 25 % system volume.

OK. So I found the source of the problem myself. On the XPS series of laptops there is a program called Waves Max. When the driver updates I guess it also changed all the settings in this program for some reason, which added a massive bass boost, and a rather harsh compressor to all audio coming through the system. This was fixable by opening the program and turning down the dials 'Boost', 'Details', and 'Width'. 

Never again.

* Note: Profanity is not allowed on our Forum

* After you installed the 3/22/19 Realtek A05 driver and found the issues, did you try to rollback or reinstall the previous working Realtek driver by going here;
- Change Category to Audio
- Click Realtek High Definition Audio Driver
- Click Older versions

Whenever I have sound problems, I download the driver I want to use.   Then I go offline and use the Device Manager to uninstall the sound device and check the box to uninstall all drivers.  I may even uninstall again if it pops up another Realtek device, but you may be able to reboot then install the downloaded driver.

I go offline to keep Windows from throwing in another driver I may not want.

The Waves user interface has presets for each type of device connected.  You may be able to create your own profile for each device and save so when it asks what was plugged in, it will default to that preset.

If you headset is a Bluetooth version, that is a little different than a wired device.  Adjustments may have to be made in other places and the Spatial Sound option may be involved.

Had the same problem after yesterdays update. So i needed to downgrade to  

"Realtek-High-Definition-Audio-Driver_FMM28_WIN_6.0.1.8642_A05"

I spent all day trying to figure out why after some updates sound was distorted. Reinstalled countless drivers, looked in google and youtube for help, but then... Wild idea appeared after reading this thread. Disabled Waves stupid software and everything went back to normal. Ugh Dell.

Ughh! After my Dell XPS updated the driver and messed with my sound levels without me realising, I proceeded to do a week of video work, adjusting all the sound levels to fit the messed up MaxxAudioPro settings that come with the driver update. So frustrating Dell!

The solution seems to be to either roll back the driver, or in the MaxxAudioPro interface, hit the little toggle in the top left and that will disable the horrible EQ it applies.

Thank you to the users in this post who pointed me in the right direction

I just ran into this issue on my new XPS 9570. Resetting to the aforementioned A3 driver worked like a charm. It also fixed the problem of having to start my computer with my headphones plugged in for my computer to recognize them. Clearly someone who worked on the Realtek drivers since 2018 is really bad at their job. Thanks to those who contributed to this forum already!