I have an HP Spectre x360 15t-ch0xx. These systems originally come with a Realtek audio driver. As with apparently many Realtek drivers, it had problems; the main was that it would start playing audio about 2-3 seconds after you you started the video/whatever. Annoying.
Following advice online, I ditched the Realtek driver and went with a generic Microsoft driver. That solved the 2-3 sec delay, but I believe this was the one with the mushy/crackly distortion in the left channel through the headphone jack — which I use 99% of the time to feed larger/better speakers.
In May HP posted a new Realtek driver (Release 6.0.8940.1 Rev.B, 5/5/2020). It works… most of the time, sorta. My current headache is that the audio gets out of sync. Usually the audio leads the video, by as much as 0.5 – 1.0 second or more. This is VERY distracting when I’m using the laptop to drive a projector to watch a movie — or Hamilton, as I did this week.
Sometimes I can restart the player and that will resync the sound… but then it quickly drifts off again. And this is not an ideal solution when you’re trying to watch a movie. The delay happens regardless of video source: Youtube, Disney+, whatever.
As far as I’ve noticed, it does NOT do this with a USB speaker.
Any suggestions? How can I make this thing work the way it’s supposed to??
Gary
Windows 10 Pro, 1909 18363.836, installed 8/22/19
Realtek High Definition Audio (SST)
New Realtek driver, explained above
