Realtek – F6 Pro – Audio Fix for sound pop – may apply to all Realtek issues

[GarethRossUK]

I’ve had sound pop for a while can’t put my finger when I first was aware but it wasn’t out of the box.

After Chris pointed out the issue with the speaker from Teclast in the F7 model I returned to figuring out what would resolve this.

I had been following the line of DSP Latency being the cause but looking online those fixes involved playing about with the CPU power settings and timings neither did I want to mess with. After hearing about the speakers going into sleep I decided to look another route into fixing this, searching for Realtek sound pop provided with a better insight into the possible cause. A lot of people began to complain of this issue around the time of the 1709 from 1703 update it seems the way Windows 10 managers power for the speaker or possibly other power saving features may have become more aggressive with this update as a result a lot of Realtek audio card owners have been using the Realtek HD Audio manager to turn of power management. Now for some reason Teclast did not include this software and it is not possible to install this either and I’ve tried even by installing the latest 2018 drivers directly from Realtek alas no power option was presented.

This got me thinking now in device manager each device has a details tab and a long drop down list of functions are detailed. Now on this drop down list keep pressing the P key to directly jump after a few presses to the power data you will be presented with a lot of power information now the important part that fixed it for me and surely will do the same for anyone with Realtek audio is to follow what occurs with a gap with no sound being played.

Current power state : D3 is when the speaker has gone to sleep, this when changing to D0 (D Zero) causes a brief pop in the audio playback. Now I’m not sure of the timings for the D3 to be initiated but this is the cause.

Leaving it at D0 does fix this but you may notice a greater power draw nothing drastic however I have noticed a slight increase in CPU temperature but I can’t confirm this is the cause and how the two could even be linked. It is only at most a 2*C increase so nothing to worry about and I’d rather have pop free audio experience.

 

Now this is where you need to be sure to follow the steps to recreate this fix. This if done incorrectly can break other components to be sure to double check the information changing the wrong device power state could be harmful but the worst that will occur is a fresh Windows 10 installation I however did not have any problems when performing this myself and have gone two days with this fix and now other than the Magic Mic driver for the built in microphone still not being very good my Teclast F6 Pro is perfect even for gaming Ryse Son of Rome at 30fps at 78*C. Anyway to the fix!

 

You will need to locate the correct device in device manager, easiest way to find device manager is the Windows + X key find device manager from the list.

 

You will see I have audio inputs and outputs open and sound, video and game controllers both share the same device name however the important difference for the fix is the driver key, you will want to take note of this and it is important that it is identical otherwise you will either not see the correct settings or potentially break another devices driver and not know which it is that has stopped functioning correctly.

Next you will need to open regedit the easiest way to open this is to just type in regedit into search and open it from the results.

 

You will see a list of values (Directories) firstly open HK_Local_Machine from that open the System directory then current control set then control and then class. Now that driver key from earlier, this is what you will want to scroll through to find the driver key maybe identical or something else this is why you should look at your own driver key from device manager in the earlier step.

Once you have found this you will see a lot of numbered directories 0007 and 0008 both have power settings hidden within. Now I’d suggest if not insist in right clicking on each one of these both the 0007 and after the 0008 and choose to export this is to create a backup of the original settings in case you need to restore these later. Exporting will create a regedit backup which can either be restored or values checked at a later time.

I would suggest at first for me in the end both powersettings folders values had to be changed but start with trying only 0007 you will find four values do not edit default as the value isn’t set and must not be changed. Instead you will want to change the lower two values, idlePowerState and performanceIdleTime by clicking on each name and replacing the four sets of values with all FF FF FF FF in each entry point being sure to replace and not add the values while doing so.

Restart Windows and check the values have not restored to previous state. Now re open Device Manager and check the power state it now should always remain on D0 and never change to D3 this only refreshes when you close and re open the device within device manager and does not update in real time.

 

You can read Microsofts explanation of power states on https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/kernel/device-power-states

 

I hope this helps not just for the Teclast F6 Pro but the F7 owners and perhaps anyone with Realtek audio pops.

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[Chris G]

Great thanks for this, tested on the F6 Pro now and seems to work fine so far in my testing.

Chris | Admin
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[GarethRossUK]

Good to hear it is also working for you, was the driver key the same or something different?

 

I’ll share the files for others to run to easily patch the settings if it is a common driver key.

[Madhias]

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[Madhias]

For me it was {4d36e96c-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0011\ so it is not always the same.

Did you register any significant battery life losses with the FF FF FF FF option?

[Madhias]

As it seems, the popping is still there when using headphones (Popping approximately once every second). Any way to get rid of this?

[Author]

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