PC Processors

[HHH03]

I have a Lenovo P620 with Threadripper 3945WX and it uses a Realtek ALC4050H chip for audio. The audio will drop out during Windows sounds like starting a program which needs privileges to run. Maybe 1/2 of the sound is truncated. Then it will play normal until there’s a break of 10 seconds or more, then the audio is truncated again. Lenovo forums suggested the USB bus is going into sleep mode when not being used and it takes a few seconds to “wake up” causing the brief loss of audio. I’ve tried changing Windows power settings and it hasn’t  helped.
Any ideas what’s causing this or how to fix it.  

[elstaci]

There is fairly new BIOS, Audio, & Chipset for your PC from Lenovo Support Download page: https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/ro/en/products/workstations/thinkstation-p-series-workstations/thinksta...

Possibly updating all 3 drivers including BIOS might solve your Audio issues.

Note: have you tried using Windows Audio Troubleshooter to see if it sees anything wrong?

[HHH03]

I just got my computer yesterday and everything is factory fresh… I only updated the bios and Windows so far. I haven’t tried the chipset drivers or audio driver. The BIOS was outdated when it arrived, so it’s possible the drivers are outdated too. 

This is my first AMD product and I’m sure there’s new things to learn. The Windows version is slightly old, I believe it’s 20H2.  I’ll check these items out tomorrow. 

On Lenovo's forums, I asked the same question and the Lenovo representative said:

"Personally (guess this) P620 is designed with a USB sound card. USB sound card in accordance with Microsoft’s WHＱL requirements, when there is no sound for a long time, there will be a "sleep" process (all "USB devices have this feature) See if you can set the host to the highest performance to see if it improves"

It seems the cause is something to do with the USB busses going into a sleep process.  Unfortunately, the long period of time is around 20-30 seconds.  

[elstaci]

Go to Windows Power Options and change the setting concerning USB from being suspended (sleep) and also prevent the computer from going to sleep (temporarily only for troubleshooting purposes).

I guess what Lenovo Tech said about "See if you can set the host to the highest performance to see if it improves" was changing the setting from USB going into Suspension in Windows Power Options.

I downloaded your Lenovo PC Hardware Installation guide and it mentions this setting in BIOS if USB is not working:

In my opinion Audio issues not related to the GPU Card is either a BIOS or Motherboard issue.

[HHH03]

I figured out a potential cause, the fix I'm not sure about.  I went to device manager and clicked on Realtek USB Audio Rear.  Clicked on details, drop down menu and click on power data.  Current power state: is D2 when it truncates the audio and goes to D0 when it works correctly.  The next issue is how to stop the audio device from going into D2 state.  Nothing I've done has worked... power management, BIOS settings nothing works.  The device goes to power state D2 in 10 seconds.  

[elstaci]

This Microsoft Document about Device Power States explains everything concerning D0, D1,D2 & D3: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/kernel/device-power-states

From above Document:

"A device power state describes the power state of a device in a computer, independently of the other devices in the computer. Device power states are named D0, D1, D2, and D3. D0 is the fully on state, and D1, D2, and D3 are low-power states. The state number is inversely related to power consumption: higher numbered states use less power."

"The power state of a device might seem to be unrelated to the power state of the device's parent bus. For example, a USB device might be in the D2 (selective suspend) state when its parent host controller is in the D3 state. These two states appear to be inconsistent only because the definitions of the Dx states are different on USB and on the bus (typically PCI or PCI Express) that the USB host controller is connected to."

You might have a better understanding of what the full document is explaining.

Sound like the USB Audio device is not working correctly. Maybe if you disable the USB Audio and install a PCIe Audio card and see if the same thing occurs.

This would eliminate the USB Audio if the PCIe Audio Card works fine. In which case I would put in a RMA to have your PC repaired.

[HHH03]

My computer is brand new, I’ve only had it three days. I’m going to contact Lenovo support tomorrow as I have the feeling this is a known issue without a current fix. The Lenovo forum mentioned this is a function of WHQL driver policy. Never the less, having audio drop outs because the device or driver isn’t designed correctly is not acceptable. This is the first computer I’ve owned that had issues with its onboard audio device. 

[HHH03]

Interesting day… I contacted Lenovo’s support department and they suggested a reinstall of Windows 10.  I noticed a new BIOS update and I attempted to update my machine first… it failed and went into a recovery bios mode and it won’t update period now. It powers down when the flash file attempts to install so it will always fail. Since it’s 4 days old, I’m eligible for a replacement instead of a service call. I’m not sure how this will go… I’ll find out tomorrow. 
At this time I’m not going to curse at Lenovo… the computer performs very well except for the audio issue I’m having… this could be caused by a BIOS that’s corrupted or needing to be updated. Time will tell. 
I didn’t pay a lot for this machine as Lenovo had a very good promotion price last month. My old HP with dual Xeon 12 core (24 cores total) CPUs doesn’t perform as well as this single Threadripper Pro 12 core and all the PCIe busses are much faster. 

[HHH03]

I was able to fix the audio problem without too much fuss.  I had nothing to do with AMD hardware or the Lenovo P620 computer.  It's the Realtek driver for the ALC4050H Codec.  I changed the driver for my sound device to the Windows USB Audio 2.0 driver and all is good now.  The Windows USB Audio 2.0 doesn't support the power state D2.  It supports D0 or D3 power states, so the audio device doesn't go to sleep after 10 seconds.  

Hopefully this will help others having issues with this Realtek ALC4050H Codec.  

[elstaci]

Good troubleshooting.

Maybe you should let Lenovo Support know what you found out since Lenovo is the one that installed the original defective Realtek driver.

[HHH03]

I've already posted over there letting the person 'mebsterbball"  who instructed me how to recover a failed BIOS flash.  Hopefully they read my updated post.