Crackling sound while playing music in HP SPECTRE X360 Ultrabook

[TedSteel]

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@BinaryJay wrote:

I'm glad my post about the new intel bt and wifi drivers seems to be working for someone other than me.  Though I haven't really used the PC since I posted that up and with my luck it will start misbehaving the next time I use it again.

My first rule of device drivers is always go directly to the manufacturer of the device, pretty much all of the drivers that HP has available for it's machines online are way out of date.  I don't have any HP software installed on mine there is little point.   That's part of what bugs me about the audio system here is that they use some obscure audio system that I just can't find drivers for anywhere other than HP's support site.  Oh well...  

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I'm half wondering if it's Threshold 2 that's fixed this. I say "fixed" cautiously. Jury's still out.

[andrewiam_com]

You can download generic Realtek drivers from their website:http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownT...

[BinaryJay]

No those are not for the right device, you can't use them.

[andrewiam_com]

Huh. They've worked for me. I have set aside an hour tonight to test drivers, so I'll make extra sure to uninstall everything before trying the Realtek drivers. The biggest challenge would be forcing the right Intel SST driver, since the DTS Audio Control Panel is bundled with the SST driver.

[TedSteel]

Sooo...  the pop is back. I launched iHeart Radio and heard the pop 3 times during the gap inbetween songs.

I fired up the Latency Monitor tool. Let it run for 30 seconds before it started warning that my system might not be able to handle audio streaming. At the 3:01 mark, it indicated the following in red text:

Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks. You are likely to experience buffer underruns appearing as drop outs, clicks or pops. One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. At least one detected problem appears to be network related. In case you are using a WLAN adapter, try disabling it to get better results. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates.
LatencyMon has been analyzing your system for 0:03:04 (h:mm:ss) on all processors.

I think it's a matter of time before the crackling returns. I'm letting iHeart Radio stream now and will let you know. 

Was just about to hit post when I heard the crackling.  A short lived victory.

[goldflame09]

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@TedSteel wrote:

Sooo...  the pop is back. I launched iHeart Radio and heard the pop 3 times during the gap inbetween songs.

I fired up the Latency Monitor tool. Let it run for 30 seconds before it started warning that my system might not be able to handle audio streaming. At the 3:01 mark, it indicated the following in red text:

Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks. You are likely to experience buffer underruns appearing as drop outs, clicks or pops. One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. At least one detected problem appears to be network related. In case you are using a WLAN adapter, try disabling it to get better results. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates.
LatencyMon has been analyzing your system for 0:03:04 (h:mm:ss) on all processors.

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I just tried the program myself. Over the course of about 5 minutes of listenting through headphones and trying pandors and locally stored music, the absolute max was 1922. For the most part, it stays at about 1250 with occasional drops below 1000, however there is no pattern among those drops.

[daxliniere]

This DPC business makes me very worried.

I'm a record producer and mix engineer. I planned to use this laptop for running remote recording sessions and if this is really unfixable, then this laptop is completely useless to me.

I'm off to do some DPC tests...

[daxliniere]

**bleep**.

DPS is averaging 1500 microseconds... my studio PC is 1000 microseconds

[goldflame09]

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@daxliniere wrote:

**bleep**.

DPS is averaging 1500 microseconds... my studio PC is 1000 microseconds

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What were you hoping it was going to be? I dont think a laptop will ever hit what a studio PC will

[andrewiam_com]

Yeah, plus external DACs are cheap nowadays. I would recommend carrying around one of those.