Hi,

Thanks for your reply!

I am aware of that thread, and I am appreciative of the work that's being done there to support owners of ASUS motherboards, with regards to audio drivers. That being said, I prefer obtaining device driver software only from the hardware vendor itself.

I downloaded the driver on from the ASUS website on December 31, and if my memory serves me right -- that download was still available about a week ago. Two days ago, having browsed to the same URL, I could no longer find said driver. I am therefore interested in knowing the exact reason why this driver was pulled, and subsequently, whether or not I should refrain from installing my previously-downloaded copy.

I downloaded and installed the (win 10) 9244 drivers on my Dark Hero a couple weeks back. Since then I've had multiple random hard lock ups in windows while gaming. Complete hard locks - need to reboot the PC. In every case when it locks up there is a repeating, screeching audio sound playing non-stop. My guess would be that there is something wrong with these drivers so they've been pulled. I was coming here to see if there was any discussion about them before I rolled back to the previous drivers.

Repeating the info I posted on the other thread about the Dark Hero not having the same exact audio codec as the CX-8 Hero. Asus US site for these boards says the Dark Hero has ROG Supreme FX7.1 Surround Sound High Definition Audio CODEC and the Crosshair VIII Hero has ROG SupremeFX8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC with DTS and ESS. I don' know exactly what the difference is between these 2 codecs but the Hero seems to have the better one, which is surprising. I don't know if that means they should have different drivers.

FWIW, I just checked MoKiChU's link for the ASUS ROG SS3|DTS Sound Unbound motherboards. He has v6.0.9301.1 WHQL [18/01/2022]. This looks like a later version that what PavelPr referenced in his OP. I just confirmed that the CX-8 Hero US support site still has v6.0.9244.1 dated Nov 24,2021 listed for Win10 & 11. CX-8 Dark Hero US support site has v6.0.8960.1dated Nov 03,2020 listed for Win10 but no audio driver for Win11. I understand that OP wants to use drivers from Asus so I am just letting you know that there appears to be a newer version than what Asus has listed for either mobo.

I personally don't like to download drivers from Asus because of all the extra junk they bundle in the zip file. The Asus drivers are also usually several versions behind. I guess from a support standpoint it would be best to only use Asus packaged drivers. Then again, Asus support tends to be people reading from a script, so whatever. I tend to like using the latest versions because I figure they updated them for a reason.

Example - The Asus driver download for my RealTek Wifi driver extracted into 72 assorted files spread across 15 subdirectories. The RealTek driver install package extracts 4 files in one directory. That is what I call BLOAT.

I fully agree that Asus should do a much better job of explaining what is going on with these drivers, and have more interaction on this forum in general. It is the ROG forum after all. To be honest I think that after they have your money they really don't care and only provide service because they have to. This is probably also why the drivers they list on their support sites tend to be out of date.