Wireless + Sound skipping continues...

I thought I had originally fixed this problem, but after doing a reformat and reinstalling Windows XP it's more apparent than usual.

Whenever the wireless and sound are both enabled, the audio will skip or crackle frequently, especially when the wireless card searches for other networks (which it does about every 60 seconds). I've tried practically every solution available for my Windows XP install, but it continues to happen.

When I use the DPC Latency program, the graph shows latency spikes of 200000+ microseconds every 30-60 seconds while the wireless is on. I tried disabling Wireless Zero Configuration in Windows services, but the wireless continues to search/detect for new networks.

Anyone have any original ideas on how to either stop the wireless card from searching for new access points, or to stop the sound interference quickly? Again, I'm running Windows XP (so I can't disable enhancements like in Vista) and I'm using a Dell Wireless 1395 (so I can't disable the A band in the network configuration).

 

only thing i can think of suggesting is to perhaps try going to the device manager, finding the wireless card, and then try editing the settings there, i can toggle between G / B /A / random mixes of those on a intel wireless card, though i'm not sure if when you say "(so I can't disable the A band in the network configuration)." you mean you can't do that.

 

It's a Dell 1395 Wireless b/g card, so there aren't any options to disable or give preference to any bands in my Device Manager settings.

On an added note, I've noticed that different Sigmatel sound drivers interact with the wireless differently:

5.10.5515 - the newest one on Dell's website
-WILL skip when you manually refresh the network
-WILL skip when the wireless refreshes the network automatically
-WILL skip every time there is a DPC latency spike caused by the wireless

5.10.4991
-Will NOT skip when you manually refresh the network
-WILL skip when the wireless refreshes the network automatically
-Skips only on DPC latency spikes caused by the automatic network refresh

5.10.5143
-WILL skip the FIRST time you manually refresh the network, doing it repeatedly afterwards has no effect
-Skips SOMETIMES when the wireless refreshes
-Skips SOMETIMES on DPC latency spikes

Using .5143 right now, it skips in the beginning of songs and doesn't until I switch to another song. Also, placing the hardware acceleration to standard rather than full or off prevents some more skipping during the DPC latency spikes.

 

Ok, until XP SP3 is released to force Dell to put new drivers out (which will most likely have the same problem anyway), this is the least problematic driver I've found so far:

Sigmatel 5.10.0.5511, A09
http://support.us.dell.com/support/...eid=R158235&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=211297

Install it, and then install the newest wireless driver on the Dell website.

-Disable Bluetooth Collaboration in the Advanced tab of your "Configure..." Wireless Network Properties.
-Disable Hardware Acceleration in the Sounds and Audio Devices in the Control Panel

This will keep the crackling and stuttering to a minimum; however, it will continue to crackle if you are using your Wi-Fi heavily (surfing while downloading, etc.).

 

That's what I've always used on my laptop. Combined with nvidia driver 156.10, all the sound skipping is gone. It was actually that particular nvidia driver that finally fixed the whole issue for me.

All of the effort to "Disable Hardware Acceleration in the Sounds and Audio Devices in the Control Panel" actually made no difference after the graphics driver upgrade. I have acceleration all on full and there is still no skipping.

 

Is it just 156.10 or are there any newer ones that may solve the problem? I'm using 174.74 right now and the sound skipping is still there. I always thought that the wireless driver/card was the only culprit though, since turning it off stops the skipping.

 

Your thread was right next to a thread I started due to sound issues in GRAW so I thought that I would throw in my $0.02 here...

I have a 1390 Wireless and the Sigmatel chip (M1710)...

Initially, my laptop had Vista, and I had relatively few (none that I know, but I'm not very discriminating) sound issues...

I did a fresh install of XP MCE 2005, and then the music in Ghost Recon (and Battlefield 2) would snap, crackle and pop...if I turned down the music, no popping was heard...if I had the music up, and the bluetooth and wireless off (Fn+F2), I still had the popping so it wasn't the wireless in my case...

It also didn't occur listening to mp3's in MediaDirect or Windows Media Player or while watching movies in PowerDVD...

I completely disabled sound acceleration, and voila, problem fixed...it didn't crackle in Vista because Vista doesn't use hardware acceleration for DirectSound (thank you for that piece of info, chelet...makes you wonder how Creative is selling sound hardware if DirectSound doesn't use it under Vista)...

Dell just released the 174.31 nVidia drivers for the M1710 over the last two weeks and upgrading video drivers from 94.22 to 174.31 had no effect on the crackling of in-game music for me...the crackling was there with 94.22 and with 174.31...

I have not experimented with the Sigmatel drivers (using .5515), but based on your experience, I may try that...did you try the different revs of .5511 and A09 was best?

Otherwise, I'm going to leave Sound Acceleration disabled and see how it affects BluRay playback performance, gaming performance (no problem with GRAW or BF2 since they're older), and mp3 playback...I suspect that it will have a minimial effect since the Sigmatel chip doesn't do much anyway...

 

I have no idea to be honest. I originally found that turning Powermizer off in the nvidia options (of my original drivers) completely got rid of the problem, but saw another thread here where switching to the specific 156.10 version worked too. In fact with this particular driver you can't actually turn the feature on or off .. but the skipping is gone and that's all that matters to me

Original thread here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=202007

If you find it doesn't work then it might be the case that each model of laptop may have a different thing causing the issue.

 

Found this in the dell forums while cruising around trying to figure out how Sigmatel works with and without DirectX hardware acceleration. The post is a couple of years old, but same issue. Unfortunately, the poster suggests that permanently disabling hardware acceleration isn't a very good idea. And he suggest a different driver, but I doubt .5511 was available when he/she posted:

i love my m1710. its really a wonderful laptop, with a beautiful, crystal-clear screen, best portable graphics card on the market and top-of-the-line dual core processor.

but...

unfortunately dell/intel decided to fit it with a sub-par audio chip. ive had problems with this from the get-go. as of two days ago, i had sound issues in FIVE out of ELEVEN installed games. thats nearly half, people. not a good score for a laptop directly aimed at gaming, huh? recording music has been a nightmare. ive had to make compromise after compromise just to get sync and buffering working so-and-so. latency would sometimes be measured in seconds. finally solved it by using a third party asio driver, dell couldnt help me with it.

initially, i broke down and bought(!) the soundblaster audigy software pack as recommended by dell, and at first thought my problem solved. unfortunately, this simply moved the problem elsewhere. now, instead of crackling, popping noises i got cut-off, abrasive sound distortion on seemingly random sound effects in some of the games that had worked ok before.

having discovered that turning off hardware acceleration would somewhat remedy the crackling noises (albeit creating SERIOUS problems in games that didnt crackle), and therefore being stuck with moving that slider up and down for umphteen times every day, i decided to wait it out and hope for an ExpressCard soundblaster or some miracle driver update from sigmatel.
that was until two days ago, when i became so annoyed, that i spend the good part of a day searching the internet for every version of the driver i could possibly find. half of them werent even functional, and the rest of them all had the same issue... except for the very last one:

SIGMATEL STAC 92XX C-Major HD Audio ver. 5.10.4823
dell driver #: R114282

this driver solved the problem in almost every respect. i still have a slight crackle on certain sound effects in two VERY old games, but all newer applications and everything recording-wise seems to function properly. ive run every test i could think of. so if you've experienced any of these problems, you should get this driver ASAP. you can get it from this location

szimm on August 2006

Here's his/her link to the driver:

ftp://ftp.dell.com/audio/R114282.EXE

I'll try both (.4823 and .5511) and let you guys know.

 

For my problem, .4823 worked like a charm...stopped all the popping on in-game music for both GRAW and BF2 with full DirectX hardware acceleration enabled...

The .5511 may have improved the popping on GRAW, but it was still there...I didn't try BF2 with the .5511 driver...

The .4823 driver did eliminate my ability to control the subwoof volume which was present in .5515...but to my ears .4823 sounds fine...I played a couple of acapella mp3s (Sinead O'Connor) and they sounded fine (to my ears...no crackling, no hissing that I noticed, clean and clear, and there was no beat to interfere with hearing crackling)...I'll keep going with .4823 over the weekend and let you know if I find any snags...

 

Is there anything special you did to install .4823? I can't get it to function on my Dell Inspiron 1520.

 

Driver wouldn't install? Or sound wouldn't work after driver installed?

I just downloaded the zipped .exe...unzipped it...and then ran the setup program...

Didn't even need to un-install the .5515 driver...

I'm on an M1710, but that shouldn't matter...

I'm using XP...if you're using Vista, it may be different...don't know...

 

I'm using XP Home Edition. The sound doesn't work after the driver installs - I get the yellow exclamation point in the Device Manager.

 

Hmmm...not sure what to do with that...does the 1520 use a different version of the Sigmatel chip? I didn't think there were different versions of the chip...but I'm not very up to date on my sound hardware...

Did you try uninstalling the current driver first from the Device Manager and then installing the .4823?