Microsoft Modern USB C Speaker

My company bought over 120 Modern USB-C Speaker as the first evaluation batch which was quite good.

Now after receiving the shippments and equipping our users we encountered problems and had to check every one we could get our hands on to make an statistic and try to understand differences.

• Two third (60) are working on our Monitors Fujitsu B2410WE (with integrated USP Hub) and our Docking Stations Dell WD19S or on our PCs or on our Notebooks without problems. They are starting ultra quick no matter how you connect them.
• But one third (30!!!) are not working properly. They take minutes to start on the Docking Stations and are not reliable after that. And they won't work at all on the Monitors, Windows tells that "the USB device could not be recognized".

We used multiple different PCs, multiple different notebooks, even one that had no company restrictions at all and was simply installed out of the box with fresh and unrestricted version of Windows - it made no difference. We also tried multiple other speaker solutions - none of them had similar problems with the monitors or docking stations.

I have not found any indication of a difference between the 1/3 that are not working reliable and the 2/3 that are. The Microsoft Accessory Center shows that they have the same firmware versions and have the same hardware version. The hardware version "0.1" is quite frightening by the way.

Also the serial numbers show no system or indication as if there is a bad batch.

The Microsoft Accessory Center is quite useless by the way, you can't even select and copy the serial number...

Either the hardware design is bad as a whole, or they secretly have different chips soldered on their PCBs (chip crysis...), or the power circuit of the speaker has issues where some can tolerate and some can not. That are the only origins that i can think of on this scale.

I have no idea how this issue can be solved and how our company can use the speaker trustfully. Im quite sure that microsoft default customer support won't be a quick help. But our company needs a fix ASAP...

Really hope for and would be quite thankfull for an solution!

Hello SteveParadise

May i ask if you have tried changing the speaker out

selection on your computer. Lower right hand corner at the speaker icon

and change to your new speakers.

If you could first try the speaker with no other items connected to the dock, this would limit the draw on power and allow us to check this is actually the issue. It does seem like the issue is localised to the dock itself though, since the speaker is working whilst directly connected.

Kind Regards,

Elise

Ok but what is my solution? I have a number of things plugged into my dock. Monitor, camera, etc. with only one usb a, on my Surface, what are my options for more power?

Hi, I'm Elise, and I'd be happy to help with your issue.

It is likely that the dock is not supplying sufficient power to the speaker, you can test this with an alternative dock if you have one. Or if you able to use it plugged directly into your device.

Please let me know if you need any further assistance.

Kind Regards,

Elise