Audio goes extremely low at full volume on random intervals.

[andyferocity]

It's been about a year since HP released a driver, or any in fact (except a BIOS update) for this series of laptops. For a few months, I seemed to have issues with my speakers which would go so low I couldn't hear them and would peak back to full volume for a couple seconds every now and then. I suspected it to be a driver issue and tried re-installing the drivers HP provided, then one through Windows Update, and as a last resort through SDI-Origin. I then decided to try and re-install the operating system (having tried both Windows 10 and Windows 11) though this time instead of Microsoft, I did it through HP's Cloud Recovery tool, but that didn't help either.

After a long while I successfully managed to get rid of the problem, which seemed to be some form of a software conflict or just simply incompatibility. I looked online and managed to track down a 21H2 build of Windows, and it now works perfectly with no issues whatsoever. Though, the issue exists in both Windows 10 and Windows 11's 22H2 build.

I do realize now that 22H2 didn't have any speaker drivers released for it specifically so it makes sense, but 22H2 has been out for almost half a year now. And I have to make registry modifications to make sure I do not end up installing it through Windows Updates. It's really concerning seeing no up-to-date, working drivers for a system that's just over a year old now. Hope HP can improve on this situation.

[johndoe1024]

Hi there!

I recently had a similar problem with my HP ProBook 430 G6 (with Realtek Audio hardware). After updating to the newest Version 22H2 of Win10, I noticed a significant drop in the audio volume. Installing the newest Realtek driver off HP's Driver section did not solve the problem.
My guess is that there is indeed a compatibility issue with the Audio Software provided by HP (HP Audio Control etc.) and the newest version of Windows. As far as I can tell, the driver itself works fine.

I did the following to solve the problem:
1. Uninstall HP Audio software (i.e. HP Audio Control or similar like B&O Audio etc.)
2. Uninstall current Audio driver in Device Manager of Windows. Also make sure to tick the Option to 'Remove driver software' in the process to do a complete uninstall.
Restart laptop
3. Download and install compatible current driver off HP's Drivers section
4. If problem persists, repeat steps 1 & 2. After that, install the driver manually in Device Manager. To do that, right-cklick on the device in Device Manager. Select 'install' or 'update' driver. Choose to manually browse for the driver and find the temporary path of the previous HP driver installation which is located in C.\SWSetup\SP####. Let Windows look for the driver in this folder. If asked, refuse to install additional software, choose to install driver only.

Note that by doing this, you can not use the features like Equalizer or specific audio options that the HP Audio Control software provides.
But there are plenty of third party audio optimization tools available online, so it was no biggie for me. I rather have decent volume & working driver than proprietary audio configuration.

Let me know if this did help you. Thanks.

Peace, jd1024