Crackling sound while playing music in HP SPECTRE X360 Ultrabook

[daxliniere]

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@TedSteel wrote:

Quick thread hijack. I checked out your website. Pretty slick.

Thanks Ted & eded1122 🙂

[daxliniere]

Glad to hear there's been a bit of progress in the HP audio camp.

Unfortunately, there is still the issue of the control panel not displaying the correct states and auto-enabling itself. This is not really the thread for it, but in case all HP support attention has been diverted, I'm posting here since many of us from the original thread jumped over here.

Let's keep this alive:
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-PC-Sound-and-Audio/DTS-Audio-Control-Panel-Audio-Enhancements-...

[BinaryJay]

Well, I haven't heard the crackling again yet since I updated Windows and updated the Intel BT and Wifi drivers last.   I'm pretty sure I've heard a couple of pops at the start of playback but it's infrequent enough that it isn't driving me completely crazy.

The DTS thing is also annoying but compared to the crackling it's not a big deal for me.  Unless things degenerate from here I think I can live with the Spectre X360 again.   I would still like to see some new audio drivers other than the ones that were made half a year ago to fix the obvious DTS control issues.

Here's hoping the audio cracking thing was the worst of my troubles with this thing for the remainder of it's useful lifespan.

[TedSteel]

The pop is definitely still there. But the crackling seems to be minimized (gone) and when running the latency check, it appears to be behaving better for longer periods of time. I'm a LOT happier with these latest rounds of updates as the crackling was pretty disruptive. This is great news! 

Dax - I'm surprised you're using the laptop for any kind of audio recording/engineering/playback/etc., but I admit I'm showing my ignorance here. Why aren't you using a setup that bypasses the DTS stuff altogether, such as what I describe below?

In a professional setting, I would have thought you would be using an external DAC and serving up "bit perfect" audio from the Spectre by using specific drivers from the DAC manufacturer, like Peachtree Audio for example <-- scroll towards the bottom for Windows. Peachtree caters to home audio, but you get the idea.

I have JRiver Media Center (capable of bit perfect audio) on this laptop, have a Peachtree DAC, but have been hesitant to install Peachtree's specific driver on my Spectre because of the audio issues. I know the Peachtree driver is only used when outputting via USB to the DAC, but I wasn't willing to risk subjecting my speakers to the distortion/crackling while streaming from my NAS using the Spectre. (Note: I'm not sure if while using the Peachtree USB driver, the crackling would be present before these latest updates. I could be again be showing my ignorance here - not sure it truly would have hurt the speakers given it was an issue with the source not the amplifier - but they're expensive so I erred on the side of caution.) I plan on finally installing Peachtree's driver and hooking up my Spectre to my audio system before I upgrade another laptop to Windows 10. That laptop is currently used to serve up music to a Peachtree DAC.

Having said all that, the sound quality out of the Spectre's (or any laptop I know of) sound card is a compromise if one cares about high quality audio, which I imagine you do. So it surprised me to hear you were using the Spectre in a professional audio setting. This is really just a curiousity thing as I'm genuinely curious about your use case...

[JR_NJ1]

I have the exact same problem. It happens everytime I receive an email and the alert wave plays. It happens other times too, but not 100% of the time.

[JR_NJ1]

I did the same thing but it only laster for 1 day. 😞

I hope you're having better luck.

[JR_NJ1]

I just tried this and then an email came in, the windows sound played and then the click.

Very upsetting because in every other way I absolutely love this laptop.

[JR_NJ1]

I did a complete replacement of the windows OS. HP Support sent me new Recovery Media. After loading it I will tell you that the PC works great except for the clicking noise; however, it isn't exactly like it was before. There are many options that aren't there anymore. One example, the option to "sign out" is gone. It's restart or shut down. When saving a PDF from mail it used to automatically name it the title of the email, now it prompts for a file name. These are little things, but it makes me wonder what else I lost.

[Technocrazy]

Another update.  Still much better and longer between clicks, crackles and pops. Hours usually.  It occassionally pops when first starting a video or sound file.  But not always.  Now for the bizzare one. Streaming Pandora yesterday and closed the lid while music was still playing. Shut it all the way. Then MAJOR crackling until the computer realized that it need to shut down. Then it shut off like it was supposed to.  Strange. Not sure if this helps but sometimes the bizzare leads to the solution.

Running latest windows 10 - 1511 build 10586.11

[carlyh21893]

I purchased this laptop yesterday and the crackling started just today. Yesterday I was able to watch various videos as well as listen to music for several hours, without any problems. Today, I was watching Netflix and about 10 minutes into it, the crackling started. I began looking it up and found this forum. 

This is extremely frustrating, as I purchased this only yesterday after my old laptop crashing and losing all of my files. I would love to not have any problems with this one!

I have tried a few things, but I am not very computer savy and am too afraid to do much without knowing what I'm doing. Any suggestions from people who have had some success?