

If the sound goes back to normal once you click the handle (not moving it, just clicking it in place) then we may have a similar issue in that some other piece of software is interfering with the individual volume control. If I watch the little green bar that moves when sound is coming through, it just barely blinks, but as soon as I click the slider handle it jumps up to where it should be. I usually have to go into the mixer and just click the little slider handle and the volume goes back to where it should be at that point. I do have it muting other sounds while in a call, but it doesn't seem to go back to normal all the time after the call is finished. I also have W7 圆4 and see similar behavior after making or receiving a call through Lync. See if your player volume is down for some reason

When it happens, click the speaker in the tray and select "mixer". The main Windows volume may be 100%, but is the individual application volume still 100%? Those drivers did a clean uninstall of the existing drivers, rebooted, and then finished installing the new ones, rebooting again afterward. I went to Realtek's site and downloaded version 2.7 of their audio drivers. My volume meters had to be up to 100% for the OS, and 100% for the media playback software, with my speaker volume knob at about 1/3 level in order to get "normal" playback volume.

Seemed to correlate in some way with CPU load
