Bang and Olufsen settings greyed out when headphone jack inserted

[x360user2]

HP Spectre x360-15. 

B&O audio control panel works on built-in speakers. 

When using headphone jack, all "Output " settings are grayed out. 

All Windows 10 updates and all HP drivers updated including BIOS.

[x360user2]

I have the same issue.

[nrcross]

Do you know what audio driver is installed on your system. Mine has the Conexant ISST Audio driver which I  believe HP is shipping with their systems as the default.  I have two identical HP Envy laptops that came with the Conexant driver.  Both have the same Bang & Olufsen Control Panel and have the same  behaviour that your computer does. All functions are available in the Contol Panel when using the  built in speakers but when a pair of headphones are plugged into the audio jack the enable/disable Bang Olufsen Experience box is greyed out, also greyed out are the three mode selectors and the Bass, Treble, Voice Clarity sliders, and the Equalizer button is greyed out. So, it seems that this behaviour must be normal for the newer HP systems when using headphones. Do not know why, or if there would be a work around, or if there would be a different or updated driver coming out that would correct this. Maybe HP decided this is how it should be.

[nrcross]

Solved! At least on my two HP Envy Laptops that had the same problem. I am not completely sure what multistreaming does on the control panel, but when I turned it on and rebooted like the pop up message said, all functions on the control panel became available with headphones inserted. Also another option at the top of the General tab becomes available allowing to change between the settings page for Speakers and Headphones. Also after rebooting in the HP Audio Switch another button for Headphones appears. Looks like that solved the problem. I tried turning Multistreaming off and back on and the effects are completely reversible, just need to reboot after changing. Does any know exactly what Multistreaming means in the control panel?

[nrcross]

Please disregard my previous message about the "Bang and Olufsen settings greyed out when headphone jack is inserted"

problem being solved. I was mistaken. When you enable multistreaming and reboot there is an extra headphone option on

the General tab when headphones are inserted. Also enabling multistreaming puts another line in the HP Audio Switch where you can check either the internal speakers or headphones according to which you want to listen to the sound from. If you click on the Speakers/Headphones to headphones all the tabs are still greyed out. Also when you click on headphones in the Output tab they remain greyed out.  The only thing that can be reset when using headphones is the volume.

[Programme_noob]

Hi, Have you found a solution yet? I'm having the same problem. 😞

[nrcross]

Nothing found yet. Seems to be related to the Conexant ISST audio driver that is installed on HP laptops from the factory. I

believe they are related somehow to the B&O software. Seems that is the driver that comes on all HP labtops now. They also come with the HP Audio Switch and Bang & Olufsen Control Panel that we are talking about. Did find and older HP Pavilion laptop that instead of having the Bang & Olufsen Control Panel, had the B&O Play control panel. On that model you could access the equalizer, but nothing else.

Do not know the reason why this is, but must be default behaviour with the latest HP laptops as they are delivered from the factory.

[Programme_noob]

I think it only works with B&O headphone, not sure about that though.

[LeakyBuffer]

I had this same issue, but another thing... when you would plug in your headphones there would be no bass or anything to the audio output, it would sound like your audio was coming out a super cheap $5 headphones regardless of what hardware you are using.  To prove my point, I played the same song between my Spectre and my Mac Book Pro Retina the Spectre was supposed to replace.  The output on the Mac was nice and bassful, while the Spectre sounded like a terrible audio version due to the lack of EQ being applied.  

This is unacceptable.  And of course, you can't add bass back in as the B&O audio app shows the settings greyed out...

I tried installing a driver from another thread and for about 15 seconds that solved the audio problem, but Windows wanted to update the Intel Smart audio and once it did that and rebooted, the original driver that shipped with the laptop was back in use, and the headphone jack audio was back to crap.  So the driver that the Spectre ships with and that B&O audio is literally RUINING the audio, particularly if you try to listen to music with headphones.  How is this an upgrade?  If I woudl of heard about this issue in reviews I would not have wasted $1900 on this laptop. 

I just finally fixed the audio issue for myself... I ended up going to Device Manager > System Devices > Finding the Intel smart audio device (with the "SST" driver in the name), and opened the device, updated the driver and picked the let me select option.  After going thru that I was given the option to use the 'High Definition Audio' driver instead which looks like a 'downgrade'.  Once I did that, poof!  Issues when playing music on headphones were resolved!  

So to fix the issue you have to downgrade the hardware driver.  My sound device now shows up as a 'Realtek High Definition Audio' instead of something with the 'SST' name in it.  

I still have other gripes with the laptop that I wish I known about prior before purchasing as they woudl extremely likely of made me purchase something else.  Only reason I'm keeping now is my daughter is using the touchscreen to practice writing and drawing, so HP you lucked out there.  But you really shoudl fix your product.  Why does the audio go from having bass, treble, etc. to NOTHING when you plug in the headphones.  I tried both Audiotechnica and Sennheiser headphones and they were totally bass-less.  Yet the Mac book made them sound like a dream... For anyone reading this that likes to listen to things on headphones, you have been warned.  

EDIT: Also to be more clear, I downloaded the sp78936.exe driver from another thread on the HP forum talking about trying to fix the B&O app.  That driver might have given me the option to use the 'Realtek High Definition Audio' driver instead of the Smart Audio SST one.  So if you don't see that option, you may need to download that driver and install.  It will remove the driver shipped with the laptop, but then Windows will still see the more 'updated' driver and revert to that, after which you'll need to go back and force thd high definition audio driver to be used.  This does not give me an EQ to tweak the audio settings, but another poster in another thread had posted about using a open source equalizer.  For me just changing the audio driver was enough to get the bass/treble and overall sound quality where I find it much more acceptable than the out of the box terrible sound it produces when using headphones.  

Open Source Equalizer: 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/equalizerapo/ 

from thread: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Gaming-Notebooks/How-to-disable-Bang-amp-Olufsen-horrible-audio-correc...

[Cesarj238]

If you still dont want that driver to be installed you can go to FIle Explorer Then on the Left side look for This Pc ( Yours Obviously) , right click on it, go to properties, in the properties find the Hardware tab, once you have done that go all the way down where you see device installation settings in there you can turn it off and that will stop it from installing, ( turns back on if there is a new MAJOR Windows update. There was a more better way with the registry editor but i forgot it. I will keep you updated on this.

Oh also before i forget instead of uninstalling the driver roll it back, helps stay uninstalled forever.