XPS 8950, Realtek and Waves MaxxAudio problems

Re:  I decided to remove everything related to Realtek and Waves Audio from the system. Since then, I haven't had any more problems, and the sound is cleaner........Is it really necessary for me to have the Realtek driver / Waves software installed?

You already answered your own question.  If your audio is functioning without Realtek and Waves, it was not necessary. 

It really is a shame Dell won't even allow us to disable the onboard Realtek in the bios so we could keep a clean audio driver situation (I use nVIdia now and just disable Realtek in device manager).

Dell is better than this.....or at least they used to be.

@Element115s4​ 

"It really is a shame Dell won't even allow us to disable the onboard Realtek in the bios ..."

Are you sure about that? Enabling and disabling onboard audio is a choice for me in the UEFI. Of course, you'll need to provide your own sound device if you're going to disable onboard audio.

@MastiffX​ 

Oh yes, I'm sure.

You can with the onboard nic, the mic (not even sure what that is actually) among other options but onboard sound, nope.

What I'm not sure of is was the option there before. 
I thought it was in the older bios versions.

In case anybody wonders, a GeForce or Radeon is a sound card as well as a video card. 

But, don't video cards only do sound over HDMI to speakers built into the monitor, not to stand-alone speakers?

@RoHe​ 

This is how most people would use it, yes but not the only options.

The eARC/ARC HDMI ports allow you to route sound if you prefer some better sound options.

Also keep in mind, the days of these old audio/video codecs are coming to an end and now we embrace these:

@Element115s4​ 

Perhaps my 8960 has a different config.

@MastiffX​ 

Yes, it sure does atm.

I swear it used to be just like your 8960. :(

Oh no, fix that SATA/NVMe setting :P (Be careful)

Update: Just installed bios v1.17.1 and no change :(