Spectre x360 distorted sound on left speaker

[pdm101]

Today when listening to music on the laptop the sound suddenly became distorted and there was a high pitched buzz.

After some investigation I have found that the left speaker is heavily distorting. If I use the balance control (interestingly left seems to effect right and vice versa), I can hear that the sound is good out of right speaker and awful out of left.

In the invetsigations I re-installed driver but obviously made no difference.

It sounds like the left speaker has blown! Is there anything else to try? I have tired the HP audio test etc but as they don't seem to check left and right channels they are not useful.

Thanks in advance PDM

Product is HP Spectre x360 - 15-ch004na

[banhien · Accepted solution]

@pdm101

That probably due to Windows updates. Re-install driver should help. Please try

(a) Download the following driver and save on your computer,

    https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp87501-88000/sp87996.exe

(b) Go to Device Manager, Sound to uninstall sound driver and reboot,
(c) Right click downloaded file and select Run as administrator,
(d) Reboot again.

Regards.

[pdm101]

Thanks for the help.

That has vastly improved the sound.  

Just one question though. I didn't pay attention to versions etc. Have I rolled back to an earlier version?

Thanks again

PDM

[drsamli]

I had the same issue, laptop was completely fine then all of a sudden no sound on the right, left sided crackly as if blown speaker. I updated the bios and sound has completely resolved. It really does sound like a blown speaker but apparently it is an issue with compatibility with bios/drivers. So glad I didn't send this in. 

[jacekkilian]

Download the HP Support Assistant, install all upgrades (incl. BIOS) and restart.

You're welcome 🙂 worked for me on my spectre 13. 

[garyfritz]

Thanks, @Banhien and @pdm101!  My left channel was getting distorted and I thought my external speakers were dying.  Then I used a headset while traveling with the laptop, and it sounded bad too!  Oh no, has this almost-new laptop developed an internal hardware problem?

Nope, all it took was deleting the old drivers and rebooting.  It sounded great after that, with the default-installed drivers.  But I went ahead and installed the drivers you recommended.  It never occurred to me that a specific distortion like that could be caused by a driver problem.

FWIW, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQToGcTWSRQ highlighted the problem on my system.  The first 5-10 seconds have guitar arpeggios on the right channel.  Before the new driver, I had no right-channel guitar and the left channel was mush and distortion.  With the new driver, it sounds just like it does on my phone.