Ok... so this as been an ongoing dilemma for me and it's time I took action instead of working around it.  It's concerning this AWFUL piece of software called Waves MaxxAudio.  I've been ALL over the web to find some type of hack or workaround to make this curse go away, and there are limited options. 

I work in audio and love my XPS, and wanted to use it as a mobile satellite unit.  It's impossible to do so because of the signal processing that goes on, which does all kinds of things to the sound.  What I need is for the audio to be totally, completely and 100% unaffected by the software.  Not to mention, This whole business of selecting what happens when you plug in your headphones has got to go.  This should be automatically detected.  I know plenty of Windows systems that do this. 

Well, regardless of any of the reasons, I want it gone, and I should be able to do so EASILY, not by jumping through all these hoops.  I'm kind of disappointed that Dell would agree to making this a NON option.  But I'm sure they don't care what I (the minority in this case) want.  That being said, here's my plan:

I'd like to do a fresh, clean reinstall of windows 10 so that NONE OF THE SOFTWARE that ships with any Dell system is included.  What I want to know is: Can I install a driver THAT ISN'T REALTEK and will NOT HAVE WAVES MAXXAUDIO as it's main audio manager, when I install a fresh Windows 10?

Has anyone done this on an XPS with any success?  I have read that Windows now automatically detects your product key by identifying your machine, so I don't think that's an issue at this point, but I just want to make sure that if I go through this rather arduous process of reinstalling all my software, that I will NEVER, EVER see this MaxxAudio curse ever again?