Possble new bug found. New M15x

I was watching a movie earlier tonight on my M15x and I noticed the audio playback out of the audio jacks is god awful. Can some other M15x users plug in a pair of headphones and see how yours sounds? This might be something that not alot of us have tested out yet but trust me if you have something wrong like I apparently do you'll see what I'm talking about. The audio pops and lags terribly, makes my sennheiser headphones sound like garbage. I tried a cd, a movie and some streaming music and everything had the same results. I'm no audiophile but I know when something sounds like crap. I tested my headphones to make sure nothing was wrong with them even though I knew there wasn't. I restarted, tried to update my driver which is current, restarted again and same results. If this is another bug without an immediate fix in sight this would be a deal breaker for sure. I love how the M15x has 2 audio jacks and no need for a splitter, too bad neither of them work. if you can try yours out. We need to see if this is a problem before it's too late and we have to send them in under warranty.

 

I have done a few more things maybe you guys can replicate. Under Control Panel / Hardware and Sound / Sound when you click on that you can see your sound card and your headphones plugged in as a device. If you test the headphones you will hear a little chime sound come through the left then right. This comes in totally clear and sounds fine. Then go to the Speakers/Headphones option which is the main device and test that. Notice the audio is extremely scratchy and sounds horrid. What could this be????

Also, while using the headphones just sitting at idle with no audio playing you can hear little pops and hisses about every five seconds or so. When I plug the exact same headphones into a 5 year old imac playing the same song it sounds perfect...

 

Do you have the AlienFXController (the little alien head in the task tray next to the clock) running? If so, right-click on it and choose exit to shut it down temporarily. Any improvement?

 

Unfortunatly not it sounds like nails on a chalk board.

 

You can also try shutting down the AlienFusion service in addtion to to the FXController being disabled. I was able to correct the intermittent pops during mp3 playback (both with and without headphones).

What about disabling any active audio enhancements via the Sound control panel?

 

No go. What I am experiencing through the headphones is overall distortion of any sound I play. It sounds extremely scratchy and almost muffled in a way. The popping I am hearing is only noticable when I am not playing back any audio and there shouldn't be any noise. It almost sounds just like an old scratchy record.

* Also all enhancements are off. I reset everything in sound to default and still the sound quality through the audio jack is terrible. I cant keep my eyes open at this point, I'll try some more tomorrow hopefully some other users can test this out and give me some input.

 

I haven't looked at the driver INFs yet, but you might want to try installing the IDT driver used on the M17x. It may also support the IDT chipset in the M15x. Even though they are different chipsets, the INF may have a section for it. The M17x driver is @ version 6233 whereas the M15x is at 6217.

If the INF does not support the M15x IDT chipset it wont install and worst case you'll just have to reinstall the IDT driver using the default M15x driver.

If you want to try:

M17x IDT 92HD73C1 v6.10.0.6233

M15x IDT 92HD83 v6.10.0.6217

 

BUMP

Can some other M15x users plug in a set of headphones and see what it sounds like please?

*Hey batboy I tried the M17x driver and it installs but I have no sound now. I'm just hoping it's not a hardware issue.

 

I'm running Win7 and can confirm that I have the same issue. I tried playing with the IDT control panel with no luck so I just uninstalled it. After doing that the sound is much improved. It still clips at max volume, but the contant popping is gone. Give that a try. Of course you loose out on some of the SRS
"features" but whatever.

 

I totally uninstalled the driver an reinstalled it. I left the headphones in while restarting I came back and the audio playback was much better. It sounded a bit more quiet also. When I pulled the headphones then plugged them back in the problem came right back.

 

Don't reinstall the driver just use the generic windows driver.

 

When I uninstall and scan for hardware changes it just reinstalls the IDT driver. How do you default to the windows driver? When I uninstall and reinstall while the headphones are plugged in upon a fresh reinstall the sound is fine. As soon as you unplug the headphones and plug them back in it sounds completely different then it did just a second before, it sounds awful.

 

I guess I should be a little more clear. I uninstalled the IDT software and let Windows do its thing after rebooting. For me it was the IDT software that seemed to be the biggest issue. Though I think some of the problem is that the hardware amp clips when the volume is too high.

 

It works with the generic windows driver but that driver doesnt support the first headphone jack (in front).

 

when you say it "works", does that infer the audio quality is good?

 

i hope so..

 

Yes this fixes the scratchy distorted sound completely.

 

Do you have a headphone amp? That should fix your problem.

I think the pre-amp of the sound card is just bad.

 

No I dont but the sound even at half volume was badly distorted worse by far then a $600 budget laptop I have. changing to a generic driver fixed it so I'm thinkin it was a driver issue. The difference when I switch drivers is night and day. I agree it would be better to have an external sound card/preamp for sound quality but for settling for bad audio quality would be selling yourself short on a laptop that costs $2k+ I hope they come out with an updated sound driver because at least one other user here had the same problem.

 

So how does sound quality of the M15x compare with the M17x? Which do you think is better? Any thoughts anyone??

 

Seriously? The M17x must be better than this..

 

Depends on what you mean by sound quality. Through the onboard speakers? I would imagine the bigger laptop has bigger speakers but once you fix the driver issue there is nothing wrong with the audio jack on the M15x. All laptop speakers suck compared to the sound quality you will get through a nice set of headphones or a real set of speakers.

 

They use the same on-board sound controller....

 

I meant the speaker output of the M15x, how good is it?? I like to have a portable sound system.hehe

 

It's pretty good from what I can tell but I'm sending my system in for an exchange, I think I have a bad sound card. After all of what I said in the above posts, after removing the IDT driver completely, my audio playback still leaves much to be desired. For instance I just burned a cd onto my Imac g5 and my M15x, using the same headphones the audio quality is by far better on the old mac. I can turn up the songs all the way on the Imac and they sound great. Even at half volume on the M15x they sound pretty terrible in comparison to almost all other audio playback devices in my home, it being the most expensive. Other users have said their audio quality is "good" but I haven't seen any standards by which they are comparing good to anything else.

Removing the IDT driver does fix the issue with popping noises coming through the headphones randomly, both during audio playback and while no audio is being played. I wish I could get more people to confirm or deny that they have the headphone issue, so far one person (in this thread) claims to have the same issue while one or two others say they don't have a problem.

If you wan't to help with this, post the following info:

Headphones being used:
Popping, lagging during playback?:
Overall poor sound quality? (in comparison to something else maybe):
Method of testing: (Music, Games, Movies, Streaming)

 

Its probably just bad drivers. Unfortunately IDT doesn't have drivers and defers to the OEM so you'll have to wait for Dell to release new ones.
Alternatively, there's always a Soundblaster X-Fi Notebook

 

I talked to someone at AW that said IDT is coming out with a new driver but he didn't know if its release had anything to do with my problems. I really dont wanna wait 3 weeks to get a new system only to find out its a driver issue. The reason I cant tell right now is because both the microsoft and IDT drivers sound bad.

 

I don't know if this is present in Win7, but I had a similar problem in Windows Vista and it was because the digital audio was synced incorrectly. I think it was at 48 hz and it needed to be at 44.4 hz, or vice versa. In any event, changing the default format fixed everything. You may want to try that.

 

Does anybody know how to enable Dolby Digital output on the m15x? I cannot find that output in the "IDT Audio Control Panel". I Google'd this & found a screenshot of the setting but it was for an Intel desktop board & IDT. I've used a sound card from Creative & Xonar (both desktop cards) & there is a setting in the software to enable digital output. I cannot find this setting anything in the software that Dell ships for the m15x.

 

I too have noticed occasional popping and at best average sound quality. The sound quality coming out of my MBP is def. better. I have also noticed that there is an occasional sound lag or pause in music and at first thought it was due to spikes in CPU activity but after monitoring it in task manager they don't coincide. I am going to try another clean 7 install and not install the IDT drivers.

I have noticed these issues while listening to tracks at 256kbps with some Shure SE530s. I am going to try and ripping a cd with that bit rate and one with lossless and see if the issues keep coming up.

 

I got my M15x last Friday and I do not have any problems with Audio using my JBL in ear headset. Sounded fine in Youtube, Windows Media Player playing MP3's and Movies. The problem may affect a few units. There's going to be issues with some units.

 

Interesting thread. I had the popping issue using headphones. Every few seconds with the computer not making doing any playback there'd be a small ch-tsk pop in the headphones for no reason. It went away playing games and stuff so I was happy to ignore it.

Now, I had updates run last night and this morning and the problem seems to have gone away. I just ran up Dragon Age as well to see if this was perhaps related to the driver's implementation of DirectAudio, but it's still fine.



The only thing I have now is when the audio driver kicks in to start playing something, there's a slight chirp sound just before playback. SImilarly, after audio has finished there's a pause before the driver shuts off (kind of like a hard disk spinning down after a period of time to conserve power). When it shuts off I get that same chirp.

 

Finally, I found this thread. Being a M15x Owner, I am very disappointed with the sound quality. I guess it's not just me. Glad that there are others having the same problem here. At least I am not alone. Well, after a month of trying to fix the audio problem at my own. * Dell Support is really such a disappointment. They told me to get a new set of speakers when I know my speakers play fine from other computer. To the extend, they even told me to get a original cd because they think my song quality is mediocre. * Back to the story, I think I somehow fixed the issue by doing a couple of things. Before I start out, here is my specs.

Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Intel Core i7 820qm
Nvidia GTX 260m

Alright, what I did are,
- Installed the latest Nvidia Driver FROM Nvidia website. It has the latest 186. version, while Dell has the latest 183. version. No harm if the Nvidia driver is not the cause of the issues.

Before you do any uninstallation of the audio driver, please remember to unplug any headphones or any speakers from the audio jack.
- Uninstalled the " IDT High Definition Audio CODEC " from the device manager and deleted the Driver file. * Remember to check the box to delete the driver file when prompted. *

By now Windows 7 will automatically install the generic audio driver that came with the operation system. And what you will see is " High Definition Audio Device " under the audio tab in Device Manager.

Now, follow carefully what comes next,
- Download the IDT audio driver file from ( http://support.ap.dell.com/support/...D=ALW_LP_M15X&hidos=WV64&hidlang=en&TabIndex=)
- When the download is completed, extract the file to dell folder under C drive. (This is done automatically).
- Go to Device Manager and select the High Definition Audio Device under the sound, video and game controllers tab and select update driver software.
- Choose Browse my computer for driver software.
- Choose Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.
- Choose Have Disk option on the right bottom.
- Select the Browse button and look under C drive>dell>drivers>R232588>WDM>STWRT64.
- Select the driver file with the 64.
- Click ok and the update will proceed.
- Restart your computer and try to reproduce the problem.
- If the problem still exist, do the whole thing again but this time you install the driver from the setup.exe under the R232588.
- Upon finishing, the setup will prompt you to restart.
- Restart your computer and try to reproduce the problem.
- If the problem still exist, throw your M15x away and file a lawsuit against DELL.

I am able to reproduce the issue when I,
- Installed the IDT driver twice.
- Installed the IDT driver with the old IDT driver present.
- Installed the IDT driver with the headphone or speakers attached to the system.
Bottom line, never install the same driver twice. Always uninstall the old driver before proceeding the update. I hope these steps will solve your M15x issue. Good luck.

 

One question on the frist gen m17x had a good setup for sound. I could use all the jacks for headphones or spakers and Mics. Depending on my setup.

dose the M17x and M15x have the same feature.