Hello everyone,

I have an Asus UX410UQK, I run Windows 10. I use a program to enhance the bass and overall audio called DFX, it makes a huge difference. However, there seems to be a built in power management mechanism on this laptop model that powers down the sound card when no sound is playing. The AMPLIFICATION from the DFX program creates an annoying "pop" sound whenever I play a file or WATCH Youtube as the sound card awakens. Without DFX, this popping does not occur, but I am certain the power management system works silently. I have a work around for this, I use "Listen to Device" under microphone options, it works, it stops the popping, but it squanders the battery more quickly. My sound driver right now is Conexant SmartAudio HD. I read that there is a registry edit for the RealTek driver to stop its power management system, is there something similar for Conexant? Is there a way to stop this torture? I tried reinstalling Windows 10, reinstalling drivers and so on, I need a NIFTY solution.

Anyone chime in would be much appreciated!

No need for a reg fix...travel to Device manager...find the device...select Properties/Advanced and uncheck "allow Windows to shut this down"...it's a stupid brilliantly idiotic setting in Windows default since Vista i believe...Thanks for the response, I did not find such an option, I don't get an advanced tab. I searched under "sound, video and game controllers" --->"conexant smartaudio HD".Windows only manages devices that are hot-pluggable- USB Ports and network cards. Or if nothing else, it only exposes that power management option set for those devices.

It appears that this is a "feature" implemented directly by the Driver software. It uses two binary values in the registry- "DrvAzComIdlePowerState" and DrvAzComPerformanceIdleTime. Advice I found elsewhere suggests changing these two settings to 00 00 00 00 and 2c 01 00 00 to 2c 0f 00 00 (I cannot give a registry path because I don't have any systems using conexant sound drivers and there are no registry keys by those names on the systems I tried.). This changes it so it only powers off after 2 hours. They should be somewhere in Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet.

Now, one issue is that this may result in the battery drain just as you've observed with your workaround. Presumably this is why it has the power down feature to begin with.

I've found various reports from others using Conexant sound devices and particularly on laptop systems having this this issue irrespective of DFX. It may simply be that in your case, you've only been able to hear it with DFX ACTIVE due to how it affects the sound output. Sort of like how turning a pair of speakers on is quite noticable with a powerful subwoofer than it is on a tiny pair of phone speakers.Thank you for the response, yeah I think you summed up the situation nicely. If this power management could be set to two hours (and not 20 seconds like it is now) it would be brilliant! Do you know how i can get the registry path? In regedit (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE--> SYSTEM--> CurrentControlSet--> Control--> Conexant) there is a Conexant folder, there are some options there but I dont know which one to modify? There is an entry called 'MaxOutputLevel', there is 'Threshold', 'AttackTime'. I don't if those are relevant. There are also options under 'Hardware Profiles'--> Enum-->HD Audio. There is also Power Management and all the folders there have long serial numbers. I'm sure this is getting closer but what next? :/If you select the "CurrentControlSet" registry key, you can use Edit->Find to search for "DrvAzComIdlePowerState" which should find the applicable key where you can change the value(s).Okay I tried it it came up with nothing, I also searched powerstate and also no dice...