Please help - speaker pop

Hello, I have just purchased a brand new HP DV 3174ca laptop and right out of the box it makes a popping noise on start-up, shut down, and awakening from sleep mode. I have installed all the drivers available from HP with no luck, and also tried a factory reset with no luck.

Please help,, very frustrated with a new $2000 machine


Thanks
Andrew

youngcaesar8 said:

Hello, I have just purchased a brand new HP DV 3174ca laptop and right out of the box it makes a popping noise on start-up, shut down, and awakening from sleep mode. I have installed all the drivers available from HP with no luck, and also tried a factory reset with no luck.

Please help,, very frustrated with a new $2000 machine


Thanks
Andrew

Click to expand...

Andrew can you give us more info about your system by filling out your system specs in the lower left hand column of your posts. Specifically we need the audio chipset or card, etc.


Ken

Right click on the speaker icon next to the clock > Sounds >

ZigZag is spot on. I see the problem from a different angle, however.

Brand new, $2000, hardware issue on boot...

Hmmm.

Store warranty applies.

note to whs -
an assumption on my part: the OP means an abnormal popping sound not included in the sounds inventory.

note to whs -
an assumption on my part: the OP means an abnormal popping sound not included in the sounds inventory.

Click to expand...

Could be you are right. But there are a lot of strange sounds in the sounds inventory. That is always my first suspect.

whs said:

Could be you are right. But there are a lot of strange sounds in the sounds inventory. That is always my first suspect.

Click to expand...

I am a fan of your work.

[/sarc on] I propose that you simply dislike sound effects. [/sarc off]

Casca said:

whs said:

Could be you are right. But there are a lot of strange sounds in the sounds inventory. That is always my first suspect.

Click to expand...

I am a fan of your work.

[/sarc on] I propose that you simply dislike sound effects. [/sarc off]

Click to expand...

I think you are right. By the way:

Hey Ken, thanks for the response, I've updated my information as much as I can locate so far. @Casca, It is under warranty but I would have to send it back and loose it for probably quite a while, which wouldn't bother me if it was a big issue, but when I google it, it seems to be a common issue with HP DV7 models. Other people seem to have solved the issue with driver updates, but all of the systems seem to be slightly different enough where there driver doesn't seem to apply to me. The sound seems to be the sub in the bottom being "energized" or "un-energized" and sounds like if you took a car speaker and put 9v battery to it.....that "pop" that it makes.

Hope this helps

Here is an example of the same issue from this site, which gave me hope someone here could help : )

http://www.sevenforums.com/drivers/41331-no-audio-driver-yet-hp.html#post701716

youngcaesar8 said:

Here is an example of the same issue from this site, which gave me hope someone here could help : )

http://www.sevenforums.com/drivers/41331-no-audio-driver-yet-hp.html#post701716

Click to expand...

You have an HD IDT audio chip installed.
Win 7 driver from HP.

Select software and drivers HP Pavilion dv7-3174ca Entertainment Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

However, it could be this driver is already installed.

Question:

Does it make the pop sound when running off the external power supply, off the battery, or both.

With the unit plugged in it the AC adapter.. go to:

Control Panel/Power Options/ then select "Change Plan Settings" then select "Change Advanced Power Settings" scroll down to "Processor Power Management" and set Min/Max processor power to 100% (when running off external power) There should be a separate adjustment for running on battery power, leave it.

Reboot, see if that makes any difference.

It sounds like part of the power management system. Mac laptop users have been having fits over a similar issue... they go insane, so keep a cool head, it can be worked out.

Ap

@Aphelion, thanks for the help. I do have the x64 bit version of the driver your link was for. I tried changing the setting described in your post and the "pop" still exists. Im thinking I need the vista driver needed in the link "no audio driver yet from hp" but the one for my laptop?

thanks for the help

youngcaesar8 said:

@Aphelion, thanks for the help. I do have the x64 bit version of the driver your link was for. I tried changing the setting described in your post and the "pop" still exists. Im thinking I need the vista driver needed in the link "no audio driver yet from hp" but the one for my laptop?

thanks for the help

Click to expand...

No problem.

Speaking of "pops" an odd thing just happened to me. I had been away from the computer for a while and it has gone into sleep mode. This system is used for music production and I have a set of studio monitors + sub hooked into a 24 track mixer, all of the PC audio outs as well as external synthesizer modules/keyboards are also in the mixer. When the PC came out of sleep mode there was a loud pop. I usually monitor through phones so I usually don't hear this as they're not on while booting up or shutting down. I wonder if this is what you're hearing? It's fairly loud and definitely sounds like the battery/speaker test.

I think I know what it might be.

Right click on the Microsoft speaker icon in the taskbar.
Select Playback devices.
Select Speakers, then the "Properties" button.
Select the Enhancements tab.

Scroll down... if "Loudness Equalization" is enabled, disable it.

Might have to reboot, depends, there may be a check box for "Immediate Mode", enable that first.

The loudness enhancement is a compressor, it will try to level the audio signal, loud passages of music/speech..etc will be brought down, soft passages will be brought up.

When the computer is coming out of sleep the audio system is powered down (new green systems do this) so a small "pop" may be normal.. depends on if the output is buffered. If "loudness eq" is enabled it's hearing dead silence so it has brought the gain up, when the pop occurs, it's amplified far beyond it's original level.

Well, that's my theory... looks great on paper!

Give it a try.

Ap

I checked and "loudness equalization" wasn't selected, thanks for the suggestion though!!

youngcaesar8 said:

I checked and "loudness equalization" wasn't selected, thanks for the suggestion though!!

Click to expand...

Ahhh.. drat! oh well.

I'll have to see what caused the pop in my system.

Ap

young,

please let me know if you are able to resolve this. I've been having the same issue. I also have an hp laptop, but it's an older dv2000. I came from XP, & I had no sound issues until I installed Windows 7. I can get the "pop" noise to go away with the default driver that windows installs, however, with that driver I lose sound every time I resume the computer from sleep, & I can't get the sound back unless I reboot. With the original conexant driver that hp uses for my model, the "sleep" issue goes away, but the speakers pop quite often - normally after coming back from sleep, & also when not using sound/audio for a certain (unknown to me) amount of time. It seems like if I don't use any sound for about 15-20 min, whenever I initialize sound I hear the "pop" noise. It's as if, as I think someone else suggested, windows 7 turns off the speakers after a set idle time & the noise we hear are the speakers turning back on. I experience the noise through headphones as well.

I have searched & searched but cannot find a solution that works for me. I have tried so many different drivers that I can't remember which ones I haven't anymore. If it is windows turning the speakers off, I'd think there would be a way to disable it. I've sifted through every power option & (obviously) haven't found a setting that fixes this problem.

After dealing with this problem for several months, I'm about ready to go back to XP over it. I love windows 7 but this issue has snowballed to the point that it's like driving me insane that I can't fix it.

I'm glad I found this thread b/c it's recent & people are still posting - I hope someone out there can find a solution...

Yeah I'm sure we're not alone as after searching It seems as most DV7 models have this same issue. What gets me is that some people get there's fixed with HP drivers, I unfortunately have tried most of the ones I am aware of. Some people have had luck with vista drivers, but when I go to the HP web site and put my model in the driver search critia and put windows vista as my operating system I only get like 5 drivers in results,, and known of them are sound drivers. When I put windows 7 in the search criteria I get like 20 drivers back in the search results, but the sound driver causes the same issue as original driver.

Kind of a side note, but I've noticed that audio does not work properly with camstudio while using microsoft's default driver, but audio works fine using the conexant driver hp originally supplied with my laptop. On the speaker pop issue, both the xp & vista drivers supplied by hp have the "pop" issue. HP has not offered a windows 7 audio driver for my model.

caesar, have you had any luck yet?

pavilion dv7t popping at restart

Just bought a dv7t-3300. Out of the box it pops in the base speaker at startup and restart. In fact, it pops after exiting bios. My bios clock also randomly resets to some time and date. The pop after bios exit woudn't indicate a windows driver. It pops with or without battery use. I sent it to HP repair. They confirmed the pop, replaced the MB (with upgraded bios) and drive, and returned it as repaired. It still pops exactly the same. Idiots. This indicates a bios or chip control problem I would think. HP is probably in deep with this screw up. I thought of putting a scope across the speaker and matching a cap to the frequency, although the system should filter a high frequency out of the bass.

mgc555 said:

Out of the box it pops in the base speaker at startup and restart. In fact, it pops after exiting bios.

Click to expand...

Very strange. I have neither of those issues & I'm actually scratching my head a little bit as to how/why it's popping when you're exiting the bios. My system is much older, but I know my hp2000's bios has a system beep option that can be turned off. Even if you have that option, it probably wouldn't do anything (b/c it's tied to the motherboard beep), but you could try it nonetheless.

When you say "base" speaker, do you mean base as in the laptop's built-in speaker, or bass as in the subwoofer? If it's the subwoofer, then the issue might not be with windows. I used to have an external 5.1 system, & I remember the subwoofer making a noise when being powered on/off.

If it's the notebook's built-in speaker, I'd be calling hp again & complaining. There is no excuse for them to sell a laptop with windows 7 pre-installed that is having audio issues like that. While I'm still upset that I'm having speaker issues, it's more understandable for me b/c my laptop was originally shipped with xp. It sucks that hp hasn't released a windows 7 driver for my machine (& they probably never will), but it sucks even more that microsoft's generic driver for my device also has issues. I never had a single issue with XP, audio or otherwise. It seems like microsoft always takes two steps back to take one forward. Hopefully a service pack will remedy a lot of the audio issues.

But I cannot understand why hp would sell a laptop knowing that their hardware or drivers are causing audio issues with the pre-installed OS. If you plan on keeping your notebook, or if it's too late for you to refund it, I'd be pretty much demanding a free upgrade of some sort.

Sorry for the length/emotion...

caesar & others,

I've found (somewhat of) a solution. I alluded to this before, but on my machine, if I uninstall & completely remove my hp audio drivers, microsoft will install a generic driver on reboot - in my case it's simply called "high definition audio device driver." While I don't have the speaker pop issue with this driver, I lose my sound completely after resuming from sleep or hibernate. Because I'm on the move a lot, I put my computer into sleep mode several times a day, so it became really annoying to either reboot every time I wanted sound or to manually go into device manager, disable the driver, & then enable it again (had to be through device manager, disabling/re-enabling through control panel->sound did not work). While it may not seem like much to disable/enable a driver in device manager, it gets really annoying when you're doing it dozens of times a day.

Then I thought to try using autohotkey to setup a key to send every keystroke that it takes to open device manager, disable/re-enable the driver, & then close device manager. After a little while I got it, so now I only have to hit f12 when resuming from sleep to get my sound back.

I know this doesn't address the actual pop issue, but it's made things a lot easier for me. If you haven't already tried doing so, it might be worth a shot to uninstall & delete your hp audio driver/software, & then either refresh device manager or reboot to have windows install the generic audio driver. That driver may also have the speaker pop issue, but for me, it fixed that issue. If it fixes your popping issue, then obviously be aware that you might lose sound every time you resume from sleep/hibernation, but you know how to resolve that from what I said above.

Also, you may want to untick the two options under exclusive mode in speaker properties: from control panel, click sound, double-click "speakers," go to the advanced tab, & then you'll see exclusive mode.