What Realtek ALC chip does the HP Envy 17t-cr000 have?

[jmnielsen7]

Despite looking in all the normal places to inspect Device ID for the Realtek ALC audio chip in my HP Envy 17t-cr000 I cannot find what chip it was manufactured with.

I was able to locate this, which naturally requires some decoding skills.

I consulted this Microsoft reference for HDAUDIO devices and it says for the DEV_ portion:

&DEV_dddd

d(4) is the four-character vendor-defined identifier for the device.

In my case it is 0245. It turns out that four digit code is more specifically a PCI device ID. A PCI device map database page for Realtek can be found here, corresponding to Vendor 10EC (VEN_10EC above):

https://pci-ids.ucw.cz/read/PC/10ec

The problem is, while -for example- 0256 is a known PCI device code, and ALC256 is a real Realtek codec, if instead you appended the 0245 code I see above after stripping off the "0" and come up with ALC245 it seems that that is a fictional ALC device. According to what I can find there is no such Realtek chip as an ALC245.

I know some higher end HP laptops come with the ALC1200. Could my laptop have something like that? If not, can someone help me identify the actual chip ID of my Realtek sound chip?

[jmnielsen7]

Also, dxdiag is of no help. It simply says "Realtek High Definition Audio" like everything else.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

When I google the Realtek ALC245 device I find several references to that chip being used in several different model notebooks.

ALC245 - Search (bing.com)

The free utility that I zipped up and attached below will also provide the Realtek ALC device.

I ran it on my PC and mine has the ALC280

Close out of the summary window and click on the audio section on the left side of the program window,

Mine has two audio devices...Intel and Nvidia.

The Intel one is for the onboard audio.

On the right side of the window, it will tell you exactly what Codec your audio chip is.

High Definition Audio Codec: RealTek ALC280

Audio Codec Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0280&SUBSYS_102805A5&REV_1000

[jmnielsen7]

Thanks for the interesting tool and suggestion. This chip still resists identification though. Here is the output (basically a non-result/what I already had): 





Also the reason I was skeptical about an "ALC245" is because there is no documentation for such a chip on Realtek's website and only third party forums have references to it. There are no whitepapers on it. No Data Sheets. Nothing.

As for the few web results, one of those Bing search results is my own post from a day ago. The Ubuntu one I think I can explain as a case of the code automatically assuming that the DEV number = the ALC chip/codec number, which someone at Techpowerup debunked with a screenshot showing a totally different number than the actual chip they had.

The other sites are dead ends. All that adds up to a very fishy situation that offers no real evidence there is such a thing as an ALC245.

Of course, there's one real way to find out... which would void my warranty. And I'm sure you could imagine what that is.  🔍

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

I did a search for the ALC280 chip in my Dell PC, and it does show up.

There are actually pictures of it.

1 pcs New ALC280 QFN48 ic chip | eBay

I checked eBay for the ALC245 chip and came up empty-handed.

If the audio works, I wouldn't be overly concerned about it.

If it doesn't, then you should probably submit a support case under the warranty.

I certainly wouldn't be tearing the notebook apart to find the chip ID either.

Mainly because it is very hard to take apart these new notebooks.

On a desktop PC like the mine that has the above ALC280 chip it is not a big deal.

[jmnielsen7]

Update: This thread originally stemmed from my desperate (time sensitive) attempt to get a 44.1 kHz Sample Rate in Windows 11 for the integrated Realtek sound card as described in this thread. I'm still disappointed with Realtek and this HP Laptop that it is impossible to set at the Operating System level. And the standard recommendation to wait for a miraculous software update in the future that might change the supported number of Sample Rates in the OS is an immaterial hope, if not hogwash. Not to mention impractical if it is essential to your work now and waiting is not an option.

Given that I am an IT professional though and was very determined to get this working so that I could use the laptop for the actual purpose I purchased it for (to use for audio engineering in a DAW and eventually video editing), I found a successful workaround by installing an ASIO driver and corresponding management software. It was a rather advanced (though straight-forward) workaround, but it essentially allowed me to find an app-level override for what the OS-level driver itself will not allow. See the linked thread above for my post that I marked as the solution which has the details.

For all intents and purposes, that obviates my need to identify the chip -- even though I am still curious. My aim with this thread (before I found the ASIO solution) was to look for alternate drivers to work with the ALC chip. But aggravatingly it is impossible to identify the chip in this laptop, short of opening it up.

In the end, I suppose I won't be using that RMA shipping label HP Support sent me after all because of the workaround solution I came up with. If it hadn't been for ASIO4ALL though I would be returning this laptop, because I already spent hours with HP tech support and they could not fix the issue.