e6500 crackling audio

For everyone having the problem, please open a ticket with Dell technical support if you haven't already. If you don't desire their phone support, use the online chat option. Especially if you have on-site support, get them to come out and witness the issue first-hand. They have fixed other issues with BIOS and/or driver updates. Hopefully this could be another - but not if we don't get Dell involved. (As far as I know, they don't monitor these forums.)

Like John Ratsey, I have not witnessed any audible issues with the sound, though I do have the DPC latency spikes - and I do have an open support ticket with Dell on this.

 

I use the newest BIOS (I think it's A10 or A11). I'll try disabling the Wi-Fi card in a few days.

 

I just got a E6500 a few days ago and noticed this problem too. Long story short I disabled the Wireless A on my Dell 1510 A/G/N card and it has fixed the issue. On a side note I notice this card also drops connection after being on several hours.

I also played with Windows ReadyBoast and it seems not to matter if it is enabled or disabled. (I currently use it because I only ordered 1 gig of RAM from Dell. Waiting on 4 gigs from NewEgg).

It is dissapointing to see Dell shipping products with various issues. I just returned a Dell Studio 1537 because of faulty touch sensitve buttons. I was hoping the Latitude E-series would be better. Generally I'm very happy with the Latitude just wish I wasn't a beta tester for Dell.

My Setup
E6500 Intel P8600 2.4
160 Gig 7200 rpm HD
Intel 4500MHD Integrated Video Card
WUXGA LCD with webcam
1 Gig of RAM - Soon to be 4.
Vista Business SP1. Clean install.

Newest drivers used from Dell Website. A11 BIOS, No Control Point, and have Intel 8.2 Storage Matrix. I did disable E-Sata and enabled Intel Virtualization but this didn't change anything.

 

I can now confirm that in my case the Wifi-card is not the source of the problem. I disabled it and watched a video - the crackling was perhaps a bit better, but if so, really only a tiny bit.

 

Please keep us updated on how Dell responds to the issue. The only thing keeping me from being totally satisfied is this crackling audio. The drivers are causing latency spikes, and hopefully Dell will release drivers that will eliminate the problem. If other laptops work fine with audio, why can't the new Latitudes?

 

I guess I was expecting the same problem with my M4400 since they are pretty much exactly the same, but so far I have been unable to reproduce the audio problems that you guys have discussed here.

I have MP3s playing right now with Media Player and so far so good. I also have DPC Latency checker running and although I get a yellow spike of about 1.390 ms every 10 seconds, I almost never see a red spike and when I do there is no break in the audio stream. I can get a single red spike of about 4.000 ms when I plug in my USB stick, but again no audio problems.

M4400 (received last week)
Intel P8600
2GB DDR2
Quatro FX M770
250 GB 7200 SATA
IDT HD Audio Codec v.5.10.0.6017
Windows XP SP3
BIOS rev.A09

 

Funny thing. Stumbled upon this thread while searching for new chipset drivers...

I have the E6400 and I do experience the cracking issue from time to time. Most often while waking the notebook from hibernation and periodically while using WLAN. In the former case it stops cracking after about 2 minutes.

Today I added the Bluetooth 370 card into my system. While looking for current drivers, I noticed about the new Matrix Storage Drivers, which I installed at this occasion. Surprisingly I had some constant cracking now. At first I wanted to wait it out , but after reading here I checked out the latency tool. It indicated a constant latency of about 9000µs with fluctuations of 1000µs, which obviously correlated with the cracking. I tried with disabling some processes and devices, but no improvement occurred. Uninstalling the IDT-driver didn't work either.
My suspicion fell upon the matrix driver... Did a system rollback, started the latency checker, which now indicated acceptable values. Cracking was no more.
But there is certainly a connection to the wireless card. The attachment shows what happens when I turn it on. The sound cracks while the red bars appear.

Because of the constant cracking being related to the Intel Matrix Storage Driver, maybe you guys should try messing around with that thing. Reinstalling or trying older versions could possibly help from my point of view.

My configuration, just for completeness:
E6400, P8400, Intel graphics, 4GB RAM, 320GB Samsung HDD @ AHCI, Dell 1510 WLAN, Dell 370 Bluetooth, A11 Bios, Webcam, junky Dell Controllpointstuff installed, Vista Business

 

Dell has released new matrix storage software as discussed here. A couple of us are seeing high latency but no audio crackling.

John

 

So gardengnome, you don't use the Matrix Storage Manager at all?

 

I did use it since I experienced some cracking problems earlier and a guy in a german forum told me, that when he got in touch with Dell about that issue, he was told to install the matrix manager. As a matter of fact, it seemed to help.
But the Vista system restore seems to have only replaced the new driver with the older one, leaving the manager untouched. Thats probably why that programm does not work any more. It just say that "plug-ins could not be loaded". I tend to leave things like they are because it works now. You know about not touching the running system? I also kicked the IDT-driver which seems to worsen the sound quality, especially in the heights.

This morning i made a screenshot of the latency behaviour after a wakeup from standby... (see attachment)