Audio crashes and is messed up when it restarts

[siriusd57]

Second major issue I've had on a three-month-old HP Spectre x360.  I use headphones on my laptop.  The audio is crisp and clear when I start the computer.  Then, at some point, the sound card or something else crashes.  I look at my taskbar and it tells me there's no audio device installed.  Then it restarts and the sound is messed up.  There's no bass and it sounds like the equalizer defaulted back to a flat setting when the card restarted.  I don't know how to fix it except by restarting my computer and then I go through the same ordeal of crashing and restarting sound all over again.

Also, after the sound card starts acting up, I notice that the sound card itself seems to turn off if there is no sound playing.  For example, I'll have music playing and I pause it.  I can hear a low static sound on my headphones for about 10 seconds, then nothing.  My headphones go dead.  Then I restart the music, and although my computer is playing the music, it takes about 1.5 seconds for the sound to start up again.

[siriusd57]

I seem to have fixed the problem on my own.  I went into Bang & Olufsen Audio Control and turned off "Bang & Olufsen Experience."  Note that because I had headphones plugged in, the option was greyed out and I had to unplug them to get the section open and turn it off.  But for some reason, turning it off fixed the problem of my headphone output being f***ed up.

I don't understand why this is.  I don't mind B&O audio when I'm using my laptop's speakers because it genuinely does sound better.  But I don't understand why it would mess up my headphone output when I apparently can't even access the option with headphones plugged in.  I guess my only option from here on out is to turn it on when using the laptop speakers and turn it off when using headphones.  That's inconvenient and irritating and again, I don't understand why that would be, but since it fixed the problem, I guess I have to do it.

Will report back if the problem starts again but for now this appears to have fixed it.

EDIT:  Nevermind.  The audio went right back to being messed up about 60 seconds after I posted this.  Apparently all I managed to do was reset the audio driver somehow.  Still no solution and I am incredibly frustrated by this.

[siriusd57 · Accepted solution]

Further update.  I fixed it with a solution from another thread.  Here's the link.

System Sound Delay

So the problem is that the Realtek audio driver goes idle and somehow gets messed up when it wakes.  Again, I don't know why or how to solve it.  This solution doesn't fix the problem, it just avoids it.  You change the registry so that the audio driver never goes idle.  Doesn't fix the fact that it will screw up if it does go idle.  But I guess it works until Realtek releases a real solution.  If they do.  Which I'm not counting on.