Vista was the first time I suddenly found myself unable to use my headphones on a Windows machine. Sounds was forced to go out through the speakers. I eventually rebooted to fix it.
Your single anectodal evidence of single non-updated driver does not really prove anything about "going backwards" or tell anything about the merit of new audio stack.
Pre-Vista I might have agreed with you but now? I think Windows has quite good audio stack.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_new_to_Wind...