I have tested extensively various drivers for different devices on my HP ef2126wm with Ryzen 5 5500U on Windows 11 and have determined without a doubt that audio popping/hitching is caused by driver versions 31.0.21xxx and newer. It is NOT caused by any other driver like Realtek or AMD Audio CoProcessor. It is 100% caused by the GRAPHICS DRIVER alone. The newest safe version I believe is anything 31.0.14xxx but I use 31.0.14037.1007.
I have tried various HP driver packages for my device directly from their website, AMD driver packages, and Windows Update catalog packages. Sure enough, it is always the newer drivers from any of these sources that have version 31.0.21xxx or newer that cause audio popping and often animation issues depending on the exact driver.
To test for popping, I have a browser open and play white noise in Spotify. You will occasionally hear pops or clicks that are clearly not part of the original audio which you can verify by returning to the spot where the sound occurred.
I have contacted HP, AMD and Microsoft about this problem with no reply.
