The guy who told be the unit was being replaced, also told me they escalated the issue to the engineering team. All he could say was that they are looking into audio issues like this, and are looking at a possible firmware fix. He also said to expect the new unit to have this issue. lol. I asked if there was any way to track the issue with the engineering team. He said no and they could only do it internally, and the issue was not in the public domain, yet.
Shameful. It is at best unethical that they continue to sell computers with a fault (that they have known about for 6 months). It ought to be illegal to sell them without a warning.