I bought my Surface Laptop 2 as new on Friday. Everything has been working like a dream! But today I noticed that when I first start playing music (or even system sound) after powering the device up, the volume starts from high up and then very quickly, say after half a second or so, goes back to previously set level. I usually use pretty low volume so this makes quite a loud pop to loudspeakers and/or headphones.

I did some searching for related issues, and seems it could be related to Realtek power management. However, that is just a guess, with some evidence, though.

I managed to get rid of the speakers "pop" by disabling the fast Windows startup option from advanced power settings. That does not help with headphones, though. What helps is clicking the volume icon in footer, selecting the headphones as a device to use (even though it is automatically selected) and adjusting the volume e.g. with arrow keys. Maybe this somehow acticates the audio chip/driver and there's no kick to ears.. don't know for sure.

I also tried to install Microsoft HD Audio drivers instead of Realtek drivers and that seemed to help with the immediate problem. However, there are some other issues like lower quality audio playback, no possibility to use Realtek Audio Console and also some cracking noises when disconnecting headphones etc. I ended up re-installing Realtek, with the problem.

I am not sure what has happened since yeaterday that caused the problem to appear, or is it something else I did. However, it would be nice if there is a proper fix for this without the need to disable fast startup and play with controls before starting playback. Has anyone else noticed the same problem? Or even better, been able to fix that?