M6400 Audio hiccup issue

I havent been on here in a bit and havent had time to call Dell but may soon.

Does anyone know the solution to the M6400 audio issue. Ive read many seem to have it. Basically anything I play, no matter if its a streaming video from the internet, a DVD, or songs in my iTunes, the sound gives little "hits" every 10 to 30 seconds. Just split second hiccups.

Any info would be appreciated. As of last week anyway, I had all the latest drivers.

 

Have you tried disabling the eSATA port in the BIOS? Several users of the E6500 have reported that as being a successful workaround for the audio stuterring. Hopefully that would also apply to the M6400.

 

hmmm Ill try it, but I plan to use the eSATA port eventually.
thanks - Ill try it out later.

 

Out of the box, I get random light audio cracks and popping noises when sound card is outputting sound.

I'm able to force an audio pop\crack about 90% on demand when I load up intel matrix storage manager, and then do a bus scan.

I've written a few device drivers before, and to me this is likely an device driver\hardware issue.

I then go into bios and set HD controller to "ATA mode" (other two modes still causes it), and then reinstall clean Vista OS, plus all normal drivers (minus intel matrix stuff) and now I have no pops anymore.

 

For pops and cracks- Hmmm. Perhaps try turning off the IDT power management in the control panel to see if this has any effect.

For stuttering issues - Try turning off exntended battery life management. Also, maybe try installing the latest sound driver (A04?)

I have to say all my audio issues seem to be solved on Vista 64 (touch wood)

 

I would try shutting off your wireless card in device manager and see if the hick-ups stop. I was getting intermittent glitches in my audio on my Latitude and figured out it was the wireless card refreshing that caused the problems, in fact I could create the problem whenever I wanted by manually refreshing the card.

The solution in my case was to disable the 802.11a band of my wireless card in device manager and everything sounds fine now.

There seem to be a series of different audio problems with different causes on different machines and different operating systems so this may not be your problem but if you haven't tried disabling the wireless you might try that if only to rule it out as the cause.

Good luck,

David

 

Not sure if both issues are related, but I had the exact same thing on a new Vista installation last week (on my E6400). The only way I got rid of those hiccups was by installing Intel Storage manager.

I agree at first you're a bit disapointed when those machines can't even play a low bitrate MP3 lol.

Not sure what's the secret behind the storage manager, but it worked for me.

 

What are the specs of your E6400? Are you running 32 or 64 bit Vista?

Thanks

 

32 bit vista - Dell OEM image.

 

Looks like my original still exists (but a lot less noticeable), I still get an audio pop about once in a minute. I was able to re-pro this on demand when I "connect to network" (from wireless) and then click the refresh button.
I read 'DavidMX' post, and then disabled the 802.11a band, and I have not pops from what I can tell.

I have the Dell Wireless WLAN 1510 Half MiniCard (4322) N card.