I didn't really like the Standby solution so I looked through the posts and saw that someone was talking about some settings in the RealTek Mixer settings...
I
1. went to Control Panel
2. opened "Realtek HD Sound Effect Manager"
3. went to "Audio I/O" tab
4. clicked on the settings (wrench) button in the "analog" section
5. disabled front panel jack detection (while my phones were connected and still without sound)
6. BOOM! sound is back on
hope it helps!