Crackling sound while playing music in HP SPECTRE X360 Ultrabook

[nassafellow]

I was experiencing this plus crashes, white screens glitches across the system. Microsoft spent hours controlling my computer remotely. In the end they couldn't resolve the issue and so installed a custom version of Windows 10 for me. Solved everything apart from the white screens whenever I return to Windows Edge or Mail. It is NOT a hardware issue though. I've heard many stories of people who contacted HP for a replacement only to receive the same problem with the new one. It is such a shame the OS is so buggy since it is a brilliant computer.

[marcolorenzo]

Well you were right! It is now back. I still haven't done the driver reinstall because I am travelling right now and would like to do a fresh install of Windows 10 when I get back (I just got the laptop a few days ago). I would like to add my take on the problem though. It's not based on any technical knowledge, just something that I observed. I don't know if it will help them find the source of the problem but who knows?

As I mentioned earlier, this problem also occurs when I use earphones. Listening through the earphones and having the sufficient volume, I noticed that whenever audio is being played (such as the volume change sound effect), there is an increase in background white noise during the audio until a split second after the audio stops. The white noise is not enough to bother me but the pop/crackle happens just when the white noise stops. I get the impression that the system "turns on" the audio driver or whatever is allowing sound to come out before playing the audio and then turns it off again when it's finished which is when the pop/crackle happens. I never noticed this increase in white noise during audio playback with my old laptop which may suggest that the audio driver is always turned on, on my previous system. But as I said, I'm probably completely off the mark but just in case, I thought I'd mention it.

To be honest, this doesn't bother me too much although it may just be because I haven't had the laptop for so long. What I am concerned about is, back home, I have a pair of Mo-Fi headphones with built-in amps. It amplifies everything and I really need to be a little careful whilst using it because if I am wearing them and plug/unplug it whilst the amps are turned on, or turn the amps on/off whilst it's on my head, the pop is deafening. So I really need to remove them from my head before doing these things.

Now if this pop happens every time the audio stops on this laptop and the sound gets amplified, then I simply won't be able to use these headphones anymore and that will be a real shame because they sound bloody amazing!

[gwagner04008]

I had the same issue and after messing around with the sound settings for a long time I found a simple fix. Open the "DTS Audio Control Panel" and go to the "Listening Experience"  panel. Unselect "Audio Enhancements." When I did this the sound instantly improved and sounded great. 

Hope this works for everyone else.

[BinaryJay]

I have been plagued by this problem too during the short time I've owned this ultrabook.  I'm a professional software developer and have been building PCs since the early 90s and there is no permanent work around for this problem yet as it is definitely a windows/driver problem.

The problem with disabling DTS is that it seems to re-enable on reboot automatically even though the UI says it is disabled.  Also, I have gone as far as forcing the driver to install but not install DTS at all but the issue still randomly occurs.

The problem is based out of Wifi usage during sound playback, if you have Wifi disabled it will remain fine but if you say, try to stream music over Wifi you will eventually get the crackling until you stop the audio stream and restart it again.  What is happening is that the wifi driver is causing huge amounts of dpc latency in the system causing buffer underruns.  It seems like it is something that realtek and microsoft need to both work on to get corrected.  No adjustment of the wifi drivers or trying different versions would prevent the large spikes in latency in my testing.

At this point, it seems there is nothing anybody can do to solve this problem on Windows 10 unti either Microsoft changes something in Windows to address the problem or Realtek/HP get together and release a new driver that addresses it...  overall I am really disappointed in the audio subsystem of this notebook, why does it need to be this ridiculous frankenstein's monster of an audio device that you just simply cannot find and install the standard generic audio drivers from realtek for.

The sound problem is obvious, widespread, and really makes the laptop look bad.  I wish HP would post an article at least aknowledging they know the problem exists and are working on coming up with a fix for customers.

Personally I think if they can't solve this problem before the warranty runs out on these laptops they should replace them for affected customers with an updated model that works correctly as honestly, a problem like this is inexcusible particularly when it affects all machines (apparently).

[TedSteel]

BinaryJay - 

I installed the DPC latency checker over the weekend and noticed what seemed to be rather large latency issues but hadn't isolated the root cause yet - just got tired of messing with it. I will try this later, but logically you're theory (or perhaps your more confident than calling it a "theory"...) makes sense.

HP called to troubleshoot refresh Windows and I declined. After searching other forums on the interwebs, it seems even some of those that did fresh Windows 10 installs using the ISO file from MS still had the issue.  I'm not sure if doing a completely fresh install using just Windows 10 (i.e., get rid of the HP image altogether) fixes this or not, but I suspect if it's a driver issue any relief will be temporary.

I'm sitting tight for now, unfortunately. Spent far too much time trying to wrestle with this.

Ted

 Grammar edit: "...you're more confident..."

[BinaryJay]

I installed Windows 10 fresh from the ISO last night when trying to troubleshoot an issue with audio, but did not have time to mess with it long enough to see if I can still get the issue to happen.  I did not install ANY HP drivers at all, Windows found and installed all drivers automagically during install through Windows Update including the audio drivers though i suspect they are the same as what is available through HP.

I will post back if this miraculously made any difference with the crackling but I doubt it.

The latency is DEFINITELY from the Intel Wifi device and this kind of latency is well known to cause the audio crackling type problems that are happening here.

[TedSteel]

Awesome. Keep us posted if you don't mind. Looking fowrard to hearing your results.

[BinaryJay]

I'm not quite ready to declare victory but... I have been streaming from Groove Music Pass for the past approximately two hours on my Spectre x360 and my sound has yet to degenerate to crackles.  I don't recall it ever going this long before getting crackly and requiring me to stop and restart the audio stream to clear it up.

Steps I did prior to getting to this point:

1) Clean install Windows 10 from ISO, deleting all previous partitions in the process.  Of course, don't do this unless you are already activated on Windows 10.

2) Re-flash the latest available BIOS even though I already had that version previously installed

3) Allow all drivers to be installed by Windows Update after installation of Windows.  I stayed away from the HP support page/hp drivers completely.

4) Probably not related but I did manually update the Intel HD Graphics 5500 drivers from Intel's web site manually as they were newer than what was on Windows update.

5) Set the playback quality to 24-bit from default of 16-bit.

I didn't touch anything else system related.   Another WIndows 10 Cumulative Update did come down the pipe tonight, in their usual completely vague glory.  As unlikely as it is that something in that cumulative update corrected the problem, I'll mention it anyway.

I'm not holding my breath at this point but I know some of you are eager to hear back about my progress.  You may want to wait until I report back after a couple of more days before you wipe your systems in case it's going to be particularly a pain in the arse for you to do so.  

Edit:  Nope, it goes crackly still.  Maybe it is better (?) but certainly not fixed.  Happens repeatedly while I'm currently trying to stream a high bitrate video file over wifi from my NAS.  So don't go reinstalling Windows that is a dead end.  Now we just wait for somebody to fix this mess.  I encourage you to all put in official complaints with HP support about the crackling sound and hopefully somebody that can actually direct resources towards getting somthing done about it will do so.

[markpf189]

I'm experiencing the same speaker issue since upgrading to Windows 10. I am tempted to return this and get a Macbook while it's still under warranty. Watching any movie/show is unbearable right now. How has there been no official word from HP yet?

[TedSteel]

Hey BinaryJay - thanks for the update. Hugely helpful as I was getting closer to doing the Win 10 clean install.

It sounds like we use our laptops similarly. I actually bought this thing to act as a media player, streaming hi-res music and video from my NAS. I wanted a super quiet machine that I could use to surf the web and render media content when I chose - hey, I'm an audio/hifi dolt. My 2010 run-of-the-mill Dell does it just fine nearly 98% of the time (less a random buffering or two when wifi conditions are apparently not ideal) so I thought this would too.

I LOVE this machine for everything else. This audio thing is a real buzz-kill though. Super buzz kill.

Thanks for the detailed post.

Ted