Crackling sound while playing music in HP SPECTRE X360 Ultrabook

[Xypleth]

I have went through 2 RMA's. No solution in sight. The worker's there have absolutelly no influence to impact the issue whatsoever, they can only replace the motherboard with identical one, which of course carries the same audio curse.

This is not how a respectable manufacturer acts, ignoring all the facts and complaints, with almost 2 years and still no fix for this issue.

I will never purchase another HP product, unless I do a full feature and issue sweep. Their management is clearly broken, if an issue slips past the testing in development of the product, that's it! They don't fix products that they have sold to consumers, only focus on getting money for the next project.

[andrewiam_com]

Have you tried the new driver? It fixes the crackling for me. You might have to prevent Windows from replacing it by hiding the driver "update" after installing the new, fixed version.

[Xypleth]

Which driver are you reffering to?

The last audio driver was released "May 17, 2016", and no, that drivers certainly didn't fix the issue.

[andrewiam_com]

That's too bad. Since that driver fixed my issues, I can't offer much more help. Please make triply sure that the May 17 driver is staying installed through reboots and that you disabled the sound effects after installing it. Outside of that, you should contact HP and demand they replace your mainboard, since the newer version of the board has a Conexant DAC that doesn't have crackling issues like the Realtek DAC.

[Xypleth]

I've been asking for that board replacement since the first time I RMA'd it, they only switched the board with identical counterpart 2 times, and obvisouly nothing has changed. They said that they can't request any other parts for this device, only the same parts it had in the first place.

[Technocrazy]

@xypleth ask them to escalate it and see if you can get to an escalations specialist. That's how I ended up getting a totally new laptop. Push hard if you need to.

[Old_Vinyl]

I updated the sound drivers to the latest and it made my crackling speakers 10X worse.  From annoying to now not funcional.

[Old_Vinyl]

OK, so this seemes to be fixed.  For now?

First I updated the Realtek driver.  Restarted numerous times in a faulty loop.  The sound got much worse.  I disabled the driver and tried this again.  No luck.

I removed the driver.

http://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-spectre-13-4100-x360-convertible-pc/8499273/model...

My machine is a 13-4102dx.  I downloaded the Conexant High-Definition (HD) Audio Driver.  Restarted - no luck.

I installed the Realtek High-Definition (HD) Audio Driver.  Restarted.  That's the ticket, it's fixed.

I don't know why the same update didn't work.  But removing the driver and installing the newest version fixed it for me.  Good luck.  This was frustrating.  I'm not a computer tech by any means.

[TedSteel]

Has anyone had their Spectre x360 shock them via ear buds? (headphones) As in, electrostatic discharge to the inside of your ear canal?

I've been out of the loop on this thread (haven't posted in quite some time) but have been watching it. I haven't wanted to post because I felt like every post I made was totally negative.  "If you're not part of the solution" and all that....

For what it's worth, I haven't experienced crackling sound playing video in a while. However, the laptop has developed other issues that others here have also experienced:

- Airplane mode light don't work.

- Mini Display port stopped working (it's not the monitor or the cable, I have 2 external monitors to test with).

- Laptop will emit loud static sounds through the speakers randomly. Sometimes at startup, shutdown, or in the middle of an extended use period.

- It shocks me through the ear buds.

- Have been getting the Blue Screen of Death pretty regularly. I get different error codes each time.  <-- classic PC issue

I still love this machine when I'm just surfing the net or working on something that doesn't require video or sound. But as I sit back and listen to the attempted repair stories, it continues to be incredibly disheartening.

This is the most "buggy" machine I've ever had, and I've had lots of laptops. This is probably my last HP. The risk / reward just isn't there for me at the price point of these machines.

Ted

[Haiden773]

I've been extremely frustrated with this issue, and downright disgusted with HP's lack of response. The boiler plate support response they keep posting to all inquires about this matter is just sad, and after two decades of being a loyal HP customer, I'm hate to say it, but my next computer won't be an HP. 

For thos of you still struggling with the crackling issue, I went to the support site, and pulled the list of drivers for my model. I downloaded them all (do not use the support assistant installation method, choose manual download). I then installed them one by one. It's been almost a week now, and I haven't heard the sound crackling (*knock on wood*).

I don't know which driver resolved the issue, but I started to get the idea that the problem wasn't with the sounds card, but instead being caused by some other driver conflict in the machines--touchpad, touchscreem, mouse, etc.  

Anyway, so far so good. Before the driver update, I couldn't get more than a few hours of web browsing without the crackling starting, which reminds me... I realized that the crackling was only starting when I was watching video or listen to music through a web browser. 

Hope this helps.