Crackling sound while playing music in HP SPECTRE X360 Ultrabook

[TedSteel]

Hoping for the best...

[rcblanke]

Did the update to 1511 yesterday, but already experienced some crackling after some 20minutes or so playing youtube.. darn.

Ronald

[daxliniere]

I'd like to make it clear that there are 2 types of problems here.

1a) DTS Sound automatically re-enables itself when headphones are connected or unit is power-cycled (my biggest problem)

1b) DTS Sound control panel doesn't show correct state (my problem)

1c) DTS Sound 'enhancements' cause distortion (poor DSP design)

2) Crackling sound that occurs after some time, seemingly randomly. (I'm not experiencing this)


I wouldn't care about 1b or 1c if only 1a wasn't a problem.

As a side-note: Clearly the 'headphones connected' state can be detected, so separate volume levels for speakers and headphones are completely possible.

[BinaryJay]

I've updated to 1511 as well as newer Bluetooth and WiFi drivers (directly from Intel) and so far I've not been able to replicate the crackling.  There are still dpc spikes when starting a stream on groove but it hasn't resulted in crackling for me.  I don't want to say anything is fixed.  I'm afraid to go into the dts control panel applet still....

Need more time... 

[TedSteel]

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@BinaryJay wrote:

I've updated to 1511 as well as newer Bluetooth and WiFi drivers (directly from Intel) and so far I've not been able to replicate the crackling.  There are still dpc spikes when starting a stream on groove but it hasn't resulted in crackling for me.  I don't want to say anything is fixed.  I'm afraid to go into the dts control panel applet still....

Need more time... 

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Any update on this? Just curious if it's returned. I was away from my laptop over the past few days and I'm getting ready to install 1511 shortly.

[andrewiam_com]

Threshold 2 did not change anything for me. Note that I'm still on an old BIOS version.

[BinaryJay]

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@andrewiam_com wrote:
Threshold 2 did not change anything for me. Note that I'm still on an old BIOS version.

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Install the newest drivers available on the intel driver download site for bluetooth and wifi, install the latest BIOS, then try again.  I swear I haven't heard the crackling in 3 nights now of streaming videos from my NAS it used to happen eventually every time I tried this.   I'll probably have to take my foot out of my mouth eventually but I'm hopeful.

[TedSteel]

Still waiting on 1511 to download (it seems to be taking its time), then will update the drivers via Intel's site.  I'll report back.

For what it's worth, the iHeart radio app is my latest benchmark. The crackling returns, almost without fail, 15-30min into streaming.

[Bill_F]

Hey everyone,

Thank you to everyone for bringing this to our attention and sharing your feedback on the audio of the Spectre x360.  We value all of your feedback and have shared this information with the appropriate teams.  They were able to reproduce the sound distortion issue and are investigating.  We wanted to further let you know this was reproduced on versions using the Realtek High Definition Audio driver.  So if you have an HP Spectre x360 Convertible Ultrabook, or the HP Spectre Pro x360 G1 Convertible, you may experience this issue.

The teams are still investigating, but we will continue to monitor the situation and when there are any updates, we will let you know on this thread.

Thanks again,

Bill_F

[BinaryJay]

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@Bill_F wrote:

Hey everyone,

Thank you to everyone for bringing this to our attention and sharing your feedback on the audio of the Spectre x360.  We value all of your feedback and have shared this information with the appropriate teams.  They were able to reproduce the sound distortion issue and are investigating.  We wanted to further let you know this was reproduced on versions using the Realtek High Definition Audio driver.  So if you have an HP Spectre x360 Convertible Ultrabook, or the HP Spectre Pro x360 G1 Convertible, you may experience this issue.

The teams are still investigating, but we will continue to monitor the situation and when there are any updates, we will let you know on this thread.

Thanks again,

Bill_F

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Wow, this is huge.  Thank you for finally providing some official feedback to us that the problem has been reproduced on HP's end and that it is being looked into.  My case manager about this problem had told me HP was unaware of any problem like this and wanted me to send my machine in for repair - which I was hesitant to do knowing that it isn't something individual to my machine.

Do you recommend we sit tight and avoid sending things in for "repair" at this point?  How long do you think any further news will take and how will it be communicated to us?

Thanks!