M1330 sound stuttering... brand new laptop... WTF?

Okay, today I finally got around to using my new M1330 for some music playback.

First, I noticed that when I press the eject button for the DVD-ROM, the whole system will momentarily lock up and the sound will rapidly stutter for about 1-3 seconds until the disk is ejected, then playback continues. (This harks back to DMA problems from the 1990s...)

Second, even when idle, the sound will occasionally skip.

I've tried both WMP11 and Foobar as audio players. Same thing with either of them.

CPU use seems ridiculously high during music playback. It seems to go anywhere from 5%-40%, seemingly randomly.

Anyone have any ideas? This is not 1995 and I expect sound to playback fine on such an expensive laptop.

 

i have no idea on this one. i have the same problem and for months it is PISSING ME OFF. i can not find a solution that works.

 

Okay... this thing is going back to Dell, I swear to God... I got a great deal on the thing with the 64gb SSD, but it's just not worth it if it's 2007 and I can't even get smooth sound playback.

My 2002-era Sager generic laptop had perfect sound.

I tried calling tech support, entered my "express service code", and it tells me "the department you are trying to reach is closed... please call back during normal business hours"

Say WHAT?

 

you dont understand, all brands are doing this. its not dell specific.

 

send it back. use your sager.

 

Well that's a helpful suggestion...

I spent some time with Dell support and apparently the system pause when accessing the disc-eject function is a part of the slot-loading mechanism. Apparently all M1330's do this.

I still can't explain why the audio stutters during normal use, though. We updated system drivers here to no avail... <sigh>

It seems related to SpeedStep, however. When SS is off, audio is fine.

Still, this seems very shoddy to me. I've used that technology on other systems and I've never had choppy audio. I do, however, blame Sigmatel. No doubt their drivers are extremely poor. Their UI looks circa 1992, like it's a Windows 3.1 app.

Still debating on sending this M1330 back... For the pricey they want, audio should play uninterrupted. Again, this is the 21st century... <sigh>

 

Do you think its sigmatel? i was reading and most other laptops with the realtec chipset had this issue too, and they thought it was them. I think it is the intel drivers though, as it cant be the sound cards because i use a soundblaster external soundcard and it STILL happens.

 

Ugh...

Well, I need to do more testing, but it appears that if I change the 3D settings in the NVIDIA control panel to "Performance" mode instead of "Let application decide", the sound works fine. I even moved it over to "Quality" on the slider and the sound seemed to clear up.

I'll post more when I get more testing done. I just got home from a bit of a boozer and am in no real condition to test sound hardware.

 

I have Sigmatel Audio on my notebook as well, and I have the same problem when playing some music. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes during a song the sound will stutter for about 2 seconds then get back to normal.

The funny thing is, when I first installed Vista, and before I installed the Sigmatel driver, the sound work perfectly. No stuttering, no extra "load" time before playing the song. In my case, I'm definitely blaming the Sigmatel driver.

 

If it really bothers you get a Creative X-fi card for (~$50)... and you will have better sound quality than the built-in....

I have the stutter on eject too.. but i so rarely use the drive that I don't care much about it...

 

I dont know if this will help. I have never experienced the problem but...have you considered moving to 64bit? There is a thread here that i assisted a bit in that may help you out by Trebuin.

I find 64bit to be very stable in every aspect, not only to include a small performance boost even with 32 bit applications.

Sort of that i would wonder if you had done a clean install on the system and this problem is still occuring. I received a new system last week to test something and I dont have this problem at all... in 32 bit or 64 bit os (two diff SSDs I trade off regularly)

 

flamenko,

Thanks for the info. I just got everything done here on my Vista x64 install. I've been using it on my desktop system for quite some time with great success.

The laptop even *feels* better using x64.

The last thing I need to get going is the UPEK. Everything else seems fine.

 

From the sounds of it, and especially with the CPU usage being so high, it sounds to me that your CPU is downstepping its speed to conserve power/heat. So because it has stepped down, it has less available power, and that is why the usage while is so high when doing something like playing music. My suggestion would be to go in you're quick set, the dell think in your task bar that regulates power profiles. Set it to maximum performance, that way it wont downstep your processor. If im right, that should solve your problem.

 

This was blamed on Vista before and not the hardware. I don't know which it is. I've used my M1330 for several months now and the sound doesn't skip anymore. And there's no stutter with the eject button either. Good luck going back to that old Sager.

 

it does fix it to an extent, but it still skips.

 

It is quite a long time since this thread was started, but I have new M1330. I changed Vista for Windows XP (32 bit) and I also have problem with playing music - sometimes there are some skippings in songs. Is there some solution for this problem? And is it hardware or software problem? Thanks.

 

I have the same problem. This is ridiculous for such an expensive laptop. If Dell hasn't addressed it yet then I doubt there is a fix. But I hope somebody finds one.

 

I also was freaking out and getting ready to spill some blood. Then I found this neighbour thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=194986

In short, there are two methods: disable 802.11 a band or install latest audio driver from Dell. I tried both separately and they worked!

 

And for those who have other issues... I've pretty much confirmed that the Audio skip is a result of very poor Drivers on Dell's part.

My sound works PERFECTLY on my Vostro 1400 on Ubuntu...

 

Well, add me to the list of people with an annoying sound problem with a M1330!

Mine manifests itself as a static-like pop before each sound is played (much like the sound of a stylus being placed on a record (for those of you old enough to recall vinyl records)).

It's there almost all the time and is especially notable when jumping from one song to another in Windows Media Player, and also during the Windows logon and Skype Logon sound playback.

It doesn't seem to manifest itself if I play a CD via Windows Media Center; but it's ever present everywhere else.

I've tried everything everyone has posted so far to no avail, and Dell has already replaced the motherboard also to no avail.

As another pointed out, this is the 21st century? How can an expensive laptop, geared toward performance fail so miserably on something as simple as audio playback?

And how can Dell produce a laptop and sell it with a straight face as a performace machine with such a glaring inability to perform correctly the seemingly simplist of tasks?

And if anyone has blood pressure that is too low, just spend a few hours on the phone with Dell tech support! EVERY time you call, you have to start from the beginning... wouldn't it be nice to continue with that same person you were working with last time, the one who already knows everything you've already tried?

Does anyone know of a similar laptop other than the Dell XPS? I love everything else about this latop and would hate to return it to Dell, but this sound issue is like Chinese water torture... and I must stop the madness...

 

I put up a topic of my findings just yesterday. I tied the pops and clicks to the latency the graphics card caused by powermizer (downclocking/upclocking of the clocks). To (temporarily) solve the problem with music I used Asio4All, configured Foobar for ASIO, and I was in pure musical bliss. I haven't tried it with videos, but I think the graphics will already in its highest clock mode, so no skips there.

I'm sure the problem will be gone if I downgrade the graphics to the X3100, because I don't think the X3100 even downclocks/upclocks. Of course I need someone with an X3100 to report their findings. I didn't need the power in the first place, and the 8400M so far was a pita to deal with.

 

I'm not sure exactly what OS you are all using but I'm using vista and i flicked through this post and then decided to searched "SigmaTel High Definition Audio Codec" on google and after reading a bit or 2 i downloaded the updated codec here: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/138617 . I installed it, restarted and started all the programs i use and i havent heard one stutter so far. I've been careful to use all the programs i normally use ie: uTorrent, mIRC, foobar 2000, vlc media player, firefox + a couple of other less well known progs and the sound seems 100% fine. I even flicked between earphones and speakers and no change whatsoever. So it just seems like a dodgy codec to me. Try the one I suggested and let me know what you think

 

foobar fixed my sound skipping issue.

mostly.