Audio sounds awfull, nearly no bass

[Schaefer1]

Hi,

My company just exchanged my old PC and now I own a HP Elitebook 800G3. Beside working on it 🙂  I also want to listen to music, but my high end ear plug sounds horrible on this PC. There is nearly no bass at all.

I checked all the settings and even the driver: It's "Conexant HD Audio" Version 8.65.186.53 which is the latest available dated May 23, 2017

Can anybody help and get me back my beloved sound quality of my old PC?

Thanks a lot in advance

Michael

[anorak22]

I have the same problem.

HP Elitebook 800G3, Windows 10 64-bit

Conexant HD Audio driver 8.65.186.53 (2017-05-23)

Good quality headphones or external speakers connected to the front side headphone output (TRS jack). Great sound on my iPhone etc.

When connected to the Elitebook, the Audio is very poor - no bass, only mid / high frequency.

Tried to tweak the equalizer, disable audio enhancement etc. No success.

An external USB audio device could be an option, but I bought this small desktop because I wanted to de-clutter my desk.

Had I known this before, I would not have bought this PC!!!

@ Anybody from HP:

Any advice? Any plans to update the dreadful audio driver?

Or are these hardware limitations and nothing can be improved with the driver?

I am really thinking that eventually my next computer will not be HP/Windows any more, but Mac. 

[Eddy_G]

I also received a new Elitebook 840 G4 and immediately noticed the tinny sound and non-existent bass, the same speakers that gave me high-quality sound and bass on the previous machine sounded like shi-t on the 840 G4.     First I upgraded the driver to the latest version which was released in September, hoping that HP had listened to their customers and pressured Conexant to implement a fix...but that didn't happen.

Then, as others in the forums did, I upgraded the audio driver to the native Win 10 "High Definition Audio Device" driver and now enjoy the same good sound as on the old machine.   Another added benefit is that the worthless Bang & Olufsen audio manager has now disappeared from the tray.

Tip: When upgrading you need to select "Browse my computer for driver software", then select "Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer", at the "Select the Driver You Want to Install" deselect "Show Compatible Hardware" then select Microsoft and then "High Definition Audio Device" driver.  Windows will whine that you are trying to install an non-compatible driver and warn you of dire consequences, ignore it and install the driver.

So far restarts have not reinstalled the Conenxant driver, now I'm waiting to to see if the next automatic update replaces the windows driver with a Conenxant driver. 

HP, HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY SPEC SUCH A BAD DRIVER ON A HIGH-END MACHINE?!  SHAME ON YOU!

[anorak22]

@Eddy_G,

Thanks for your post. I did as you explained, installed the "High Definition Audio Device".

Now I have a great sound, with my external speakers plugged into the EliteDesk 800 G3 headphone output jack.

All of a sudden, the bass is strong, the sound transparent, as it should be.

Significantly better than with the Conexant driver.

The Conexant driver is total rubb-s*h. HP should really do something about this. What a joke!

[Eddy_G]

Glad that I could help, bro!

[Schaefer1]

Hi there,

Thanks a lot for your suggestion. Unfortunately I am not able to install this driver. The driver does not start with error code 10. So I still have to live with the awful sound 😞

Michael

[bugcrash]

 Eddy_G - Thanks for your post, I was having the same issue on my HP EliteBook 840 G4 work laptop... ...