Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Crackling Sound

I have to withdraw my statement. The noise came back. It is obviously a more serious issue, hence hardware related. Meanwhile even the base of my „premium“ device surface book died the very common not-charging-issue. Just read all the reviews on the MS shop for surface book or go to amazon and scroll through the 1 star reviews. The surface series is of extremely low quality. The high price is partly due to the high return and replacement rate MS suffers from for these devices. 

I can only double warn anybody to puchase this device. You will regret it very, very likely.

because nobody cares we are the guinea pigs

At first I thought "that's it", but actually it wasn't. Despite turning Cortana off completely, the crackling noise is still there.

The cracking sound is not limited to the Surface Pro 4.  I have a Microsoft Surface with the exact same issues.  Luckily, I caught the popping noise this afternoon and captured the events.  Below is a complete list of Errors, Warnings, and Information from the Event Viewer -- in sequence.  These were the ONLY events in the previous hour and occurred right at the time of the "pop."

At the time, the Microsoft Surface was simply sitting on the coffee table (unplugged) with the cover closed.

MICROSOFT … this is consistent with all of the other posts.  Please use this information to come up with a fix.

This is clearly an issue with how Windows 10 power management and/or voice activation interacts with the Surface hardware.  Please do not instruct me to run diagnostics, as it's not going to show any issues (as has been evidenced by numerous other posters).

Report back here when you've identified the issue and have an ETR on a fix (Win10, drivers, etc.).

Thank you for your help.

---

WARNING: 7/21/2018 2:37:56 PM -- Occurred twice, same time

Event ID: 701

Source: Win32k (Win32k)

Power Manager has not requested suppresion of all input (INPUT_SUPPRESS_REQUEST=0)

INFORMATION: 7/21/2018 2:37:57 PM

Event ID: 1

Source: SpeechRuntime

Audio Orchestrator Power Event: Battery Saver Is Not Enabled, Voice Activation Ready

INFORMATION: 7/21/2018 2:37:57 PM

Event ID: 100

Source: Client-Licensing

ClipSVC service is starting.  Caller: TriggerStarted

INFORMATION: 7/21/2018 2:37:57 PM

Event ID: 101

Source: Client-Licensing

ClipSVC service is running.  Version 10.0.17134.1

INFORMATION: 7/21/2018 2:37:57 PM

Event ID: 507

Source: Kernel-Power

The system is exiting connected standby

Reason: Lid.

INFORMATION: 7/21/2018 2:37:58 PM

Event ID: 916

Source: ESENT

svchost (6040,G,98) The beta feature EseDiskFlushConsistency is enabled in ESENT due to the beta site mode settings 0x800000.

INFORMATION: 7/21/2018 2:38:04 PM

Event ID: 916

Source: ESENT

svchost (4112,G,98) The beta feature EseDiskFlushConsistency is enabled in ESENT due to the beta site mode settings 0x800000.

ERROR: 7/21/2018 2:38:28 PM

Event ID: 515

Source: SurfaceDtxService

Dtx failed to enumerate DGpu

INFORMATION: 7/21/2018 2:38:31 PM

Event ID: 916

Source: ESENT

MicrosoftEdge (11824,G,98) The beta feature EseDiskFlushConsistency is enabled in ESENT due to the beta site mode settings 0x800000.

ERROR: 7/21/2018 2:38:59 PM

Event ID: 515

Source: SurfaceDtxService

Dtx failed to enumerate DGpu

As it turns out, disabling the Cortana speech recognition did not permanently fix the problem.  The good news ... it did rule that out.  The popping sound occurred again tonight at around 9:40pm and every item from my July 21st post (see above) is in the Event Viewer -- EXCEPT the SpeechRuntime item.

Once again, the Event ID 701 was the first item -- the triggering event:

Event ID: 701

Source: Win32k (Win32k)

Power Manager has not requested suppresion of all input (INPUT_SUPPRESS_REQUEST=0)

One other thing I learned is that the "EseDiskFlushConsistency" from Event 916 is a Beta feature in Windows that shouldn't still exist because it was supposedly patched out.  It was apparently (unintentionally) "unpatched" back into the Windows 10 Operating System during the Fall 2017 Creators Update. To date, nothing has been done to fix it.  There's a lot on the Internet about this causing a variety of disk and power issues.  Since that's nearly the last item chronologically in the Event Viewer, it's likely that this popping/crackling issue may be caused by a remnant of an old beta feature that is corrupting Windows.

Microsoft Support - Please follow up with the Windows 10 OS team to determine if this is on the roadmap to correct in a future patch.

I've found a solution for this that worked for me

The bug is in Cortana, so you need to switch it off

Go to "Cortana & Search Settings"

Turn off all three settings:

1. "Let Cortana respond to Hey Cortana" to "Off"
2. "Let Cortana listen for my commands when I press the Windows Logo Key" to "Off"
3. "Use Cortana even when my device is locked" to "Off"

Then restart the PC

I think that you need all the Cortana settings off, because turning off just some didn't make a difference

*** FIXED-FIXED-FIXED-FIXED-FIXED ***

A huge THANK YOU to EugeneScully1!!!!!

Turning off all three Cortana speech recognition settings (and rebooting!) disables the SpeechRuntime service, which was causing the recurrent Audio Orchestrator Power Event.

As indicated in my September 1, 2018 post, the following error was correlated with every instance of the popping/cracking sound that occurred when the cover was closed:

INFORMATION: 7/21/2018 2:37:57 PM

Event ID: 1

Source: SpeechRuntime

Audio Orchestrator Power Event: Battery Saver Is Not Enabled, Voice Activation Ready

Don't let Microsoft let you believe it's an issue with bad hardware.  Rather, this is a fundamental Microsoft Surface firmware and Microsoft Operating System bug - since I have one Microsoft Surface laptop and two Microsoft Surface Pro 4 laptops (kids in college), which were purchased years apart - and the issue occurs exactly the same on ALL THREE DEVICES.

After disabling Cortana's speech recognition and ensuring that it doesn't activate when the cover is closed or reenable upon startup - the popping/crackling issue has appears to have stopped completely!!!!  This makes sense, since the offending error can't occur if the offending service is disabled.

Since my kids are at college, I can't confirm it's fixed on their devices yet but I have pretty good confidence that it will be.  This is the first answer that seems to address the root cause, which is the SpeechRuntime service.  Now Microsoft needs to get their Windows 10 Operating System team together with their Surface laptop hardware team to resolve the underlying Cortana bug!  Otherwise, speech recognition should never be used on a Surface laptop.

In case anyone missed the moral of the story … **CORTANA SPEECH RECOGNITION IS FRYING MICROSOFT LAPTOPS WITH POWER EVENTS!!!**To fix it, turn off all speech recognition settings before you destroy your laptop.

Thanks again EugeneScully1! You are a genius.  I'm not sure why the Microsoft support personnel on this forum couldn't have figured that out a long time ago.