DTS Audio Control Panel Audio Enhancements dont stay off

[TedSteel]

Does it make the sound while plugged in, on battery alone or both?

[Zshani]

Hi Ted,

It's on both, irrelevant of whether it's plugged in or on battery. PS it's not a sound when something is touching the base out sides of anything.

It is the sound like traditional hard drives make while reading and writing the discs. Signaling/Morse code like /hissing/buzzing sound.

I hope I've explained it well, at least I tried to and it makes sense.

[andrewiam_com]

I'm not sure what could really cause that sound besides a faulty component on the motherboard, but there aren't too many coils or other parts that could possibly whine in a device as compact as the x360. 

As for the argument about expecting sound quality, I have a decent (but not great) ear and the x360 without enhancements sounds pretty good to me.  The enhancements introduce horrible clipping and punish every part of the EQ (if that makes sense) that makes music unbearable.  I would place myself at the 90% mark of the audiophile bell curve - not an absolute expert but still interested in good audio.  I can't reliably tell the difference between a 256kbps and 320kbps MP3, much less a WAV, but I still expect audio quality that I can't easily determine is worse than any of my other devices.  If my $200 Nvidia Shield Tablet can make decent audio, so can this $1300 laptop. 

[Zshani]

I'm not sure either Andrew, this grinding noise was so bad that I had to return the spectre x360 the first time i purchased it, within 28 days.

In quiet room it becomes much more audible. I checked it with sound meter App and its around 31db. Disabling or unusually the sound driver stood this noise, I've checked it numerous times. Installed latency monitor which shows WLAN as the problem area but again nothing authentic enough to pin point one thing or give a definite working solution.

Thanks for your consideration.
Cheers

What I would like to see is HP responding to our issues. So far we are discussing it and trying to find a solution whereas the main vendor is keeping a blind eye. Certainly not good so please HP wake up and firm a team of two who focus to resolve crackling/popping/hissing/buzzing noise issue..

[lewisl9029]

I finally fixed this issue for good today on my machine (HP Elite x2 1011 with Win10 64 bit), almost by accident, and I made an account here just to document my rather convoluted workaround.

I went through some of the same debugging steps as others in this thread, including hunting down every non-essential file in the driver specs and deleting them, but nothing worked. I was about to give up, but I figured as a last resort, I'd try some other manufacturers' drivers for Realtek I2S audio.

I ended up finding a few devices that used Realtek I2S, including tablets from Dell, Lenovo, and Asus. The Lenovo and Asus drivers worked on my machine, but had the same issue as the HP drivers. The Dell drivers install correctly, but afterwards, Windows would no longer recognize my Realtek I2S audio device. Installing the Dell drivers, and then waiting for Windows to reacquire the Realtek I2S drivers from Windows Update is what I believe solved the issue for me (I'm not sure why, but it might have something to do with the newer version of Intel Smart Audio included in the Dell drivers).

I'm not sure if I just lucked out or if it's completely reproducible (I really don't want to risk my DTS-free audio by trying it again UPDATE: just tested it again and luckily it seems to be reproducible, at least on my machine), but feel free to give these steps a try and let me know how it goes:

1) Ensure you have Realtek I2S audio drivers from HP installed. If not, install them.

2) Download the Dell drivers from here: http://www.dell.com/support/home/ca/en/cadhs1/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=7MY7Y&fileId=351354330...

3) Install the Dell drivers. It will first attempt to uninstall your existing drivers and then prompt for restart. Allow it to restart, and it will continue the installation when you log back in. There will be another restart prompt afterwards. Allow that too. For me, the installation window kept popping up after restarts indefinitely after these steps. If this happens to you too, feel free to just close it.

4) If you didn't wait too long between restarts, at this point your audio should *not* be working. Intel Smart Audio should not be listed as one of your audio playback/recording devices, and Realtek I2S audio should no longer be visible under device manager. If this is not the case, you might want to try again from step 3 if you can still hear the DTS enhancements (if you can't, then that means step 5 has already been completed. Congrats! You're done!).

5) Now just wait for Windows to reacquire the audio drivers from Windows Update, and you're done! If you're feeling impatient, you can try triggering an update check manually from settings or from device manager.

Hope this can help all those ears suffering from DTS "enhancements" out there. 😃

Thanks,

Lewis

UPDATE: One important thing I forgot to mention is: *Make sure you don't open the DTS control panel after these steps.*

Before I opened the DTS control panel, I could hear that the enhancements were off all the time, including after restarts. After opening it for the first time, the DTS enhancements came back after every restart for me.

Repeating the steps above and not opening DTS control panel got my machine to revert back to the desired behavior (no DTS enhancements at all). Give that a try if you've already opened it by accident.

[TedSteel]

Hey Lewis - this is really awesome. Thanks for taking the time to post such a good writeup.

I'll give this a try later today (hopefully) and report back.

Ted

[Zshani]

Thanks Lewis,

That does sound interesting and promising. I hope it will work for others too, let's see if the problem doesn't reappear as in most cases the noise issue resurfaced.

I've been fighting with this issue for a year now and in the end I got a replacement machine, which has a Conexant hd audio, but still having the same problem. On top of that the screen flickers. I think basing on your track I'll look for conexant drivers from dell or other vendors and report back. If not I'm just asking for the refund and sulk for a while, as I love the machine nonetheless and it's a shame HP didn't care for anyone of us.

Good luck all
Regards

[andrewiam_com]

The install prompts with every reboot might be from Windows automatically installing drivers.  Turning on airplane mode during the installation might prevent this. 

[andrewiam_com]

I downloaded the Dell driver, put my computer in airplane mode, uninstalled the HP driver, rebooted, installed the Dell driver, rebooted, forced the Realtek I2S driver in Device Manager, rebooted, and tested.  I can confirm the Dell driver is a partial success!  The Enhancements still sound bad, but there is no clipping and and they stay off when plugging in headphones.  They still reenable on reboot.  No headphone jack detection for separate volumes either.  This is still a great find and I recommend installing this ASAP! 

[lewisl9029]

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@andrewiam_com wrote:

I downloaded the Dell driver, put my computer in airplane mode, uninstalled the HP driver, rebooted, installed the Dell driver, rebooted, forced the Realtek I2S driver in Device Manager, rebooted, and tested.  I can confirm the Dell driver is a partial success!  The Enhancements still sound bad, but there is no clipping and and they stay off when plugging in headphones.  They still reenable on reboot.  No headphone jack detection for separate volumes either.  This is still a great find and I recommend installing this ASAP! 

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One important thing I forgot to mention is: *Make sure you don't open the DTS control panel after these steps.*

Before I opened the DTS control panel, I could hear that the enhancements were off all the time, including after restarts. I only get the behavior you described after opening it for the first time. Repeating the steps and not opening DTS control panel got my machine to revert back to the desired behavior (no DTS enhancements at all). See if that works for you too.