Audio Latency Problems/Solutions With All Dell Studio & Studio XPS(And any other one) Discussions

Hey everyone,hows is going?thats great.Allright Down to the point.Recently i ordered a Dell Studio XPS and like many of you with dell's,my main use was to be for audio production,dj'ing or any sort of thing pertaining to music.After ordering and then reading up online,ALOT of people are having problems getting the latency and/or pops skips & jumps out of their sound source.
Some say the problems lie within the Lan card,some say video card.And most importantly,Dell does not have an answer to the problem because they are not trained to understand audio type situations(Unfortunately).So...Here is where we are going to solve this thing(or try really hard because besides that...these are prett good laptops otherwise) Once i get mine in the next 3 days,im going to tell you what i did because i WILL fix it or at least try hard and fail.Thanks & join in

 

For the record we've already eliminated everything that can be disabled in Device Manager, including all the obvious stuff like Wi-Fi.

We're using DPC Latency Checker to check. Everthing would be fine if it weren't for the mystery spikes in the red every 5 bars.

 

Alright,well from what ive been gathering,its gonna take a bit more than disabling a bunch of shaite.So i take it your having the problem?

 

But yea the whole point is we start our own thread because that 1640 dell one is getting quite large and a little off topic or too broad of topic.so everyone should just talk about it here!

 

The latency checker is a useful tool. Try it.

There is also a free low latency audio driver
http://www.asio4all.com/
Works with many of the professional applications and should provide latency free playback, mixing etc.

 

Yes thanks.good point,ive been using it for a while with every computer ive had,and anyone that is having problems should first download the asio drivers just to rule that scenario out of their configuration.Because from what i see,most people are having problems with using interfaces via firewire or usb(and the asio4all usually helps just using the internal card.What type of dell do you have?

p.s the latency checker is @ http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

 

Good initiative, gsxmusic!

I have one uplifting comment. I have audio running flawlessly on my 1640.

To reach that point took one hell of a trip (of testing) and to top it all - I don't have a clue what solved the issue. That is to be totally honest.

I don't have much time to elaborate right now, but let it be noted that I am a semi-professional audio engineer and producer running my own mobile studio since 2004 and I am very aware of all the typical glicthes, clicks and pops on computers, especially on Dell laptops.

A short rundown of my rigs:

Rig #1:
Dell Inspiron 8200, 2.4GHz P4-Mobile, 2GB RAM, 2 internal 7200 rpm HD's.
This laptop has a buit-in Texas Instruments Firewire controller (which is a good thing).
Stripped down XP Pro SP3.

Rig #2:
Dell XPS 1640, 2.8GHz Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, 1 internal HD + one external eSATA HD.
This laptop has a built-in Ricoh Firewire controller (which used to be a bad thing).
Stripped down Vista Home 32bit.

Both rigs use:
Pro Tools 8 M-Powered (for M-Audio interfaces).
M-Audio 1814 Firewire interface.
M-Audio Transit USB interface.

I am testing out Windows 7 with Rig #2 at the moment. More info on that later.

I hope to be back soon with more info to throw into the pot. There's hope.

One last thing regarding the DPC Latency Checker: don't let this tool intimidate you. I have it showing spikes every 2-5 seconds and yet I have a system running without dropouts or clicks using 64 audio tracks, lots of plugins and lots of automation going on. Go figure

 

Okay this is good news,real good news. I actually had some question that are probably basic as heck.well i guess the first one is,so there is no known way to get pro tools running on windows vista 64 bit correct?

and that external hard drive,cannot boot the operating system right?

 

M-Powered, no. But for LE don't rule it out.

Yes, it can.

 

so you are saying i can dual boot and boot the second operating from an external hard drive?

 

This seems to be going off topic already.

I was doing some recording yesterday using a firewire interface (Tascam Fireone) and my XPS M1530 using the drivers that came with the interface.

I was using Live to record (mostly acoustic guitar and MIDI from an electric piano), and didn't notice any problems with latency or popping.

 

@hjorte

Would you mind recording something over your line-in and check if there are any pops ?
That would be highly appreciated

 

@ gsxmusic

Yes. At some point I had a working dualboot setup with Windows 7 32bit on the internal HD and Windows Vista 32bit on the external eSATA. I tried to get a triple boot going, adding Vista 64bit to another partition on the external drive, but I couldn't get all three showing on the boot screen.

 

Dual booting is pretty relevant for any PC audio laptop setup, due to the fact that you should strip the "audio OS" completely to maximize it for audio, therebye making it unusable for normal work. A lot of SW and HW disabled and a minimum of programs installed.That's where you need dual boot, to be able to boot into a normal working environment. This is true when using Pro Tools and this is where I come from.

 

My internal audio is disabled. I use external audio hardware via Firewire (or sometimes USB). This is the professional way of doing it and the only way when using Pro Tools.

 

I see; I just use Smartclose to close everything, and then disable my internal audio and plug in my Firewire interface... never had a problem with it.

 

See some people just get lucky with no problems,and thats what boggles the mind,but thats good that you have it running fine,i have a question for you,what kind of wireless card do you have?

 

So you have your pro tools workable enviroment windows on the external hard drive?

 

I get the latency spikes but I've only had a couple of minor skips in audio playback when doing other things at the same time. Normal audio playback is generally fine.

To those asking about Pro Tools, I'm running LE but I've only tried playback so far, not recording. Playback seems fine from some very minor testing. M-powered could be different.

Digidesign likes to list a whole bunch of unsupported stuff that they just couldn't be bothered testing. I'm running PT7.4 on a MBox2 in Vista Home Premium 64, which is about as unsupported as it gets, and it seems to be working fine. As I said though I've really only tested opening a session and playing it back at this stage.

 

Wow thats really good to know,i figured that the long list was just their way of being lazy about testing,id be looking foward to hearing what happens when you record if its possible,be sure to keep me posted.So basically your audio situation is fine in terms of latency or you still need a fix?

 

I'll test it properly and get back to you. Playback seemed fine with quite a few tracks running but I do need to check it properly. And recording is where latency problems always seem to crop up.

 

Okay, I've been testing and I think the latency is going to be a problem.

Now of course I'm running Vista Home Premium (which is unsupported), 64-bit (which is also unsupported) but I doubt either of those are the problem.

You know the buffer size too small errors PT gives you when you've got too much running at once? That basically happens whenever the red spikes would appear on the latency checker (every few seconds), even if there's absolutely nothing happening and CPU usage is pretty much on zero, unless the buffer is something like 1024+.

Recording sounds fine, and playback sounds fine, but you'd have to do it at buffers which are totally impractical for recording.

Other people should try it too becuase my quick test might be wrong, but I'm thinking the latency spikes are just lagging the system too much. Time to find a fix!

edit: by the way this is a 1340.

 

okay,okay good analasys,and i had a feeling it would come to that.However im pretty sure it doesnt matter too much if its a 1340 because its essentially the same hardware for the most part.could you do me a favor and tell me what wireless card you have installed?

 

I just did a quick test.

PT8 M-Powered.
XPS1640 using 2 HD's.
Buffer: 128.
Transit USB audio interface.
Recorded 60 tracks simultaneously for 10 minutes.

No errors. Audio is fine. The laptop 1Gbit + Wireless network card was enabled and I was reading this thread while recording.

 

^^^
That's good news. Not sure what's going on with mine, there's SOME sort of latency issue.

My wi-fi card is the Dell 1515.

 

1Gbit - thats the network card? by what company?
and that windows is vista 64 bit?

 

I have an Intel Wireless N card - I believe the model number is 4965AGN.

 

No, this time around I had it on my internal drive, but it works the other way around too, of course.

Broadcom Netlink.
Wireless is Intel 5300 AGN. I have always had better experience wrt. compatibility and performance using Intel branded cards over Dell ones. It's only a few bucks more.

32 bit Windows 7, build 7022.
M-Powered doesn't work with a 64 bit OS.

 

I was thinking it might be 64-bit messing mine up, but other people are reporting it working fine elsewhere. One good thing is there weren't any errors in recording itself. I had another computer that worked with XP but Vista introduced minor pops and clicks for no apparent reason (seemed like a clocking error).

 

Nition, this might sound like a crazy idea, but try and uninstall your graphics driver and use the Standard VGA driver from Microsoft and see if that has any effect on your pops and click problem.

When I had problems with my setup (experiencing lots of clicks and pops + a hanging PT) I could solve it by going back to using the Standard VGA driver. Every time.

 

Here's some info that might help. On a Dell Studio 1537 there was the same DPC Latency spike every 4-5 seconds that the new XPS 1340 and 1640 have. Maybe by looking at what components are the same in the Studio versus the XPS lines we can identify the problem. I couldn't stop the audio from stuttering during recordings no matter what I tried but on normal audio playback I could get it fairly stutter and crackle free the majority of the time. Here's what the latency looked like on Windows 7.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=30472&d=1234089780

The original thread can be found here. A few of us in this thread ended up returning our 1535 and 1537 machines because we couldn't get rid of the DPC latency.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=341893

 

Looks similar, although that's even worse latency than we have on the Studio XPS.

 

Would anyone want to try uninstalling the nvidia display drivers and see if it fixes the problem, using the basic Vista display drivers? The graphics drivers run a fair bit of stuff in the background. I'd try it but I can't re-download the drivers to install them again at the moment.

 

It's unlikely the graphic card driver is causing the spikes. Your machine has an Nvidia card, mine had the Intel X4500, and other people in the thread I linked had the ATI card. All of us have the 4-5 second repeating DPC latency spikes so I don't think it's the graphics.

 

I tried an install of Vista Ultimate 32-bit and get the same problems with Pro Tools, so it wasn't the incompatible OS. There's a short pause every time there's a latency spike, which kills everything on low buffer settings and if you're playing a MIDI instrument it'll cut out for half a second.

What is in every Studio and Studio XPS laptop that's could be causing the same thing? All I could think of was that was left was, optical drive? But it's not the optical drive.

What else is left? At this point I'm thinking it has to be either the BIOS or maybe the chipset. Because the only thing all these models have in common seems to be Dell.

gsxmusic, did you have any luck with yours?

 

Hi there all,

I have been looking into this for some time now and have been in contact regularly with Dell also. They've been unable to sort the problem but I am now assured that they are aware of the problem and are trying to sort it. It's an ongoing problem and most prevalent with Vista. (Before people start, I'm not saying that the problem is just Vista, but that it may be exacerbated by Vista).

Having done what everyone else has done (running DPC Latency Checker and gone through one by one disabling services/processes, installing different versions of drivers, fresh installing vista) inevitably I had no success. Although the low end of my DPC latency (when not spiking) is slightly lower when my wireless adapter is disabled.

Most recently I have been trying to get to grips with the Microsoft Windows Performance Toolkit and utilising Xperf and Xperfview.

I could give you pages and pages on that but in the end I managed to strip down the results to get 1 process to coincide with DPC latency spikes. It was listed as "System (4)" - helpful lol!!!

Anyways, having looked through the active and running processes I'm pretty sure this is referring to the system process associated with "NT Kernel & System"

It is at this point that I'm way out of my depth for understanding or explanation. But I'm thinking this basically means that we need an update from Dell, or to Windows in general to address the problem.

Indeed, this was what was intimated to me by Dell Support.

[Thoughts/criticisms most welcome]

 

Thanks for your efforts, I was thinking of trying to isolate it like that but it all looked pretty hardcore. That's good to hear that they are working on it, at least assuming that's the truth.
It'd be good if it's just something like a BIOS update needed to fix it. I wanted to try running XP for audio editing but it's so out of date now I can't even get to the first page of setup without modifying the CD.

 

I"m with you guys. XPS 13, no problems using E-MU 0404 USB, pops'n'clicks using Focusrite Saffire LE (Firewire). Firewire controller is definitely the problem in my case...

 

A breakthrough was made by the user djquartz in the Dell Studio 1535/1537 latency thread I linked before. He was able to get all green bars and eliminate the 4 second repeating spikes on his 1537 I think. Turns out it was an acpi thread. Here's the link to his post:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4634132&postcount=29

No idea if this would work on the XPS line, but it does shed some light on the possible culprit of the 4 second DPC spikes.

I've since switched to a Dell Latitude E6500 machine and have all green bars for my DPC latency without doing anything like suspending acpi threads, so I wonder what's different between the latitudes and the studio and xps machines?

 

Since Studio 13 (1340) users can't install XP at the moment due to lack of drivers I have an idea.


Once thing that may be in common with all these machines having the DPC Latency issue is TSST DVD±RW drives.

Would anyone be willing to try and either disable or physically remove the drive (I know it will be tougher because it is slot load but it can be done with some patience) and test with DPC tool to see if it resolves the issue.

These drives have been a problem for a few folks and issues have been resolved by swapping them out with other makes. If this is it this notebook could be a really awesome package capable of just about anything besides heavy gaming.

 

Disabling the DVD drive in device manager doesn't fix it. Not sure about physically removing - should technically be the same I think?

 

It`s not the cd/dvddrive (TSST DVD±RW drives) because in my previous system it wasnt a TSST DVD±RW drives but something from unknow (HS/HT or something like that). So youre conclusion about the drive doesnt fix the latency.

 

Well they have been known to cause issue...just trying to come up with something. Maybe the BIOS just isn't optimized yet.

It doesn't appear that this issue effect Linux distros on these machine's so it's has to be something with Power Management the OS, which can be muddle by a bad driver.

 

Hi justanothercrowd... are you saying that if I install linux I wont have a dpc latency issue? thanks for your reply.

 

Right, this is because Linux has a different method behind the scenes as far as power management and queries go.But... Linux doesnt have any professional audio production software and that is what is most effected right now.

you could always use Mac OSX too if you can get all the kexts and drivers working


Most likely dell will have to resolve the driver issue (which is tough because we not sure exactly what driver is causing the issue) or make some changes to in the BIOS as far as power management and possibly how it handles hardware queries so that Windows doesnt freak out like it's currently doing.

 

At least some progress seems to be being made. I'd like to see if the mystery spikes happen in XP, if anyone could actually get it installed.

 

olks...I went ahead despite the fact that everyone has had so many issues.

I went to Best Buy last night and picked up the XPS 1340

My main purpose is to use this laptop with Reason 4 and Sonar 8 paired to a M-Audio profire 610 interface. This laptop was just to good of a deal for me to pass up. I am fairly experienced with computers and have built a few whitebooks from ASUS and Intel in the past including the more recent Santa Rosa platforms.

I brought the book home and first thing first...loaded the latest A04 BIOS.

Then I loaded up a fresh copy of 32-bit Vista business (this is our Volume liscence) and and loaded all the most recent drivers available from Dell.

Loaded up Reason and Sonar 8 and then went to testing. DPC latency is exactly the same as other reported 4 green then 1 red bar.

I removed everything I could from the notebook besides RAM and CPU as well as disabling everything I could while being able to boot in the BIOS which had no effect on DPC.

I also purchased a DYNEX firewire 400/800 s port express card which installs fine but still does not let me record without pops and clicks. I was hoping this little card would yield better results but it did not.

I am about to try and install XP SP3 to see if that will get me anywhere but I'm afraid this is something Dell must address...and given that their notebooks have had a history of these issue being fixed 90% of the time by the end-user community I'm not too hopeful. The Nvidia MCP79 chipset doesnt help either since it so new.

This book is nice and fast but ti does run HOT! even with the latest BIOS and while doing minimal tasks. I'm not sure if I feel like having to undervolt this to to the temps of the Lenovo U330 or Sony SR and Z series...rant

I have 2 options at this point.

1. Return and buy a more expensive Sony VAIO

2. Try and find a USB based device like the E-MU 0404 or something that people have stated works despite the latency issu

 

For what it's worth, it's not just Dell with the problem. I tried a Lenovo Ideapad Y430 and it had the 4 second DPC spikes as well. I'm now on a Dell Latitude E6500 with no DPC latency issues. I never even knew these machines existed until I researched DPC latency. You might consider looking into the Latitude E4300 (13 inch) or the E4200 (12 inch) if you're looking for a small machine.

Screenshots of my perfectly green DPC latency can be found in this thread here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=364436

 

Hi. I've been following the thread with interest and have now joined. Dell's customer service - polite and courteous to a fault - is still trying the list if standard fixes for me. Nothing so far as you might imagine. DPC latency still spikes every 5 seconds without fail.
However, one thing I have noticed is that I get a 20 - 60 ms (yes, millisec) latency a exactly 1 minute intervals. This is the spike that, I suspect, causes my Tascan US-1641 to be dropped out completely until O pwer cycle it.
My question - does anyone see the 60s spike or is this charachteristic of my Dell 1757 laptop.
I did try going down the xperf route, got a lot of data and graphs but then discovered that it helps to understand what's going on under the bonnet.
Any comments or developments would be very useful.
All the best, Mark.

 

Just wanted to point out THIS: