I'm having a brand new audio problem. I'm not sure if it's from the PowerDirector update or a recent Windows 10 update. (They both happened at about the same time, at the very end of May.)

The problem seems to be how PowerDirector reacts to a change in the global volume setting I set in the Windows Volume Mixer.

I'm hoping I'm not the only one having this problem, because it's a little hard to describe.

What happens is that volume levels in the clips I'm watching in PowerDirector jump to about double the volume they were a couple seconds ago, for no good reason I can see.

If I go out to the Windows Volume Mixer and even slightly tap a volume level there (e.g., changing a slider from 20 to 19), then the same clip I was previewing in PowerDirector drops back down to the "half volume" I was hearing before the sudden jump.

After a few minutes of moving around the timeline, previewing clips, zooming the timeline, etc., PowerDirector suddenly jumps to double the volume again.

It seems to be related to the relationship in Windows 10 between the "Master" or "Device" volume and the volume for a particular application. Normally, I would set both sliders to the same value so that the movie I'm editing sounds good to my ears, and then I don't need to touch the volume levels again. But now, something happens in the PowerDirector program and the volume gets loud, as the result of actions that seem to have nothing to do with volume levels.

I've tried reinstalling my "Realtek High Definition Audio" driver. And I see that I also have "NVIDIA High Definition Audio" driver, which doesn't make sense to me, but it's nothing that I actually chose to install, so it must have come as part of the GeForce install package from NVIDIA.

Without nearly enough information to do so, I could theorize that maybe when I take some video-related action in PowerDirector, the NVIDIA audio driver takes control away from the Realtek audio driver, causing the audio to leap to some other setting... And then, by making any adjustment using Volume Mixer, the volume will drop back to where it was.

There are clues that I don't even need the NVIDIA audio driver, in threads like this:

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/767581/not-necessary-to-install-the-nvidia-quot-hd-audio-driver-quot-/

That thread seems to say that if I don't use HDMI-Out for my audio (which I don't; I only use HDMI for video-out), then I can or should get rid of the NVIDIA audio driver.

Other options might be to disable the "NVIDIA HDMI Output" under Windows > Playback settings. Or to reinstall NVIDIA completely so that it can somehow override the Realtek installation.

Or maybe none of those are related to the PowerDirector volume suddenly jumping in volume from where it was a few seconds ago.

Has anyone else had a problem like this? Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.