Notebook Audio

When listening to music or videos on the onboard speakers the sound will randomly and inexplicably fade to inaudible levels over the span of a few seconds, even at full volume. The volume returns to normal after pausing or muting the audio for a few seconds and then restarting it but then fades right back down to nearly nothing. Plugging external speakers or earphones into the dual-function microphone/ speaker input/ output jack changes the settings, including the volume, to whatever they were last time something was plugged in. If the onboard speakers are faded when plugging in an external apparatus, unplugging the external apparatus returns the settings to the last set of parameters for the onboard speakers and resets the sound playing through them back to normal volume levels and keeps it from fading again for a while.

I have gone through the automated HP Support Assistant troubleshooter as well as the built-in Windows 10 audio troubleshooter. Neither restarting the computer, reinstalling the Realtek Audio driver, nor a hard reset has resolved the issue. I do not experience the same issue with the generic Windows HD audio driver but the sound quality and versatility of the Realtek driver is much better so if possible I'd like to try to see if I can resolve this issue with that driver to continue to use it.