Hey cybpsych, I also have SoundMax, I've spent a couple days trying to find a driver that will actually output sound. This guy says he did it, but he has to be a liar. I tried the driver and it's bull, every version of the driver says "smwd.sys" or something like that is missing. I even found a sys file that's really similar, but it just doesn't work. Don't stress yourself out, there are actually a lot of people with sound problems in win7. I'm switching back to Vista, because Windows 7 makes me feel like I'm deaf.