Conexant ISST driver issue with Bang&Olufsen integrated speakers

[Veljko112]

Audio will fade in and out without a given reason

**beofre reading i want you to know that this is not a hardware issue because many other people have the same problem and it is really not possible that hundreds of people are having the same hardware issue that was not resolved even after getting the same, new device from HP directly.

Whenever i would use my external speakers on my ZBook, audio will with no apparent reason fade out... If it was on 100%, it would fade down to 30%, but the UI would still say that the volume is at 100%. If I'd try to lower the volume down to about 20-30%, the volume would gradually go up. Any other speaker would not have this issue.

THIS IS A DRIVER/SOFTWARE ISSUE!

Things I have tried:

- Control Panel: disabling enhancements, disabling the communications options in properties.

- Device Manager: uninstalling driver and letting windows install Conexant ISST driver (it CAN NOT install realtek or microsoft audio drivers because the device is not compatible with those, only conexant).

- Registry Editor: I've searched all the configurations in C:system32, but there was nothing that clearly says the driver is doing some DRC, AutoVolume, Normalization, Gain, AGC (AutomaticGainControl) settings in it. 

**in registry editor there are folders for INI configurations for conexant audio drivers, that include hardware detection, GPIO (general purpose input/output) settings, and custom override behaviors for the sound card, I have tried tweaking those things, still no help.

- Bang&Olufsen SmartAudio software didn't help, there are no clear settings that could affect the issue of fading sound.

- Event Viewer: did not provide anything useful

- Task Scheduler: nothing suspicious was found

- Updating/Installing older drivers did not resolve the issue.

- Uninstalling other softwares like FLOW, SA3, MicTray that comes with Conexant ISST driver pack: did not resolve the issue.

**my thoughts:

- When HP and B&O made these laptops, there is a chance that they tweaked the settings and made some limits that cannot be changed, and it is embeded in the way how this speaker works, where only workaround could be to buy an external speaker or to get HP to help us to solve this issue.

- There might be some driver conflicts with Windows and B&O drivers. I did not try to install other OS but I'm not willing to do so.

- In RegistryEditor there could be something that I have overlooked but that's not likely.

- There is a driver file named PASettings.ini, that mention some audio controls that can modify how input/output works but everything there is mentioning "Cortana Mic Gain" settings, so that could be the clue (not likely).

I hope this issue will be resolved soon, I have digged deeper than most of people would try troubleshooting this, so i hope i kind of helped resolving this issue... Looking forward for HP to see this and adress it as a bug, or just explain is this issue is something that is not an issue but a feature, so we can all sleep well. 🙂