Sound skipping in vista...lets figure this one out already!

Ok, so there are a large number of us that use vista that have our audio skip every so often. It is really annoying and no one seems to have a complete answer that works for everyone. I don't have any solution for my case.

OK, so i remember on my desktop before that i had a similar problem but this was with xp. I ended up finding a program (direct download: http://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.exe )from this site: http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml that monitors the latency of device drivers. What happens is when the latency going to a component gets to large, it causes a skip in the audio or video. If you run the program and your latency goes into the red, your audio will most likely skip at that moment. If this is true, then its caused by a driver problem. And mine is.

Well, on my desktop before, it turned out to be an IRQ sharing problem. My sound card was sharing the same IRQ as my video card, so that caused problems. I ended up switching the PCI slot that the sound card was in and it changed the IRQ, thus making everything happy.

I noticed on my laptop, that when my wireless card is removed from the laptop, i have no problem, or the problem is very limited. So checking the IRQ's, yes, it was sharing it with the hard drive's IRQ. Since my laptop has 3 PCI express ports (intel ICH8 family) in the base for FCMs, WWANs, and WLANs etc, i tried moving the card around to each slot. My IRQ's changed with with each slot (either 16, 17, 18, with 17 being the default installed slot for the wireless card on these laptops). 16 is my video card, 17 is my hard drive controller and ethernet controller, so i have it in 18, which is shared by the sd card slot. But the skipping remains when latency spikes.

I am nearly positive it is driver related somehow but to what i am unsure, because the problem is widespread across many different platforms.

When i disable the wireless, the latency spikes are much less frequent. However, they still occur. I think it has to do with the intel AHCI driver. Does anyone run vista with AHCI mode disabled and running ATA mode instead? Do you still get spikes in your latency?

I should also mention that i use a sound blaster live external 24bit usb sound card. But many others just use the on board sound and have the same problem.

And this is not program specific. It happens when playing music in WMP, ITunes, and even ordinary windows sounds.

Does anyone have any input on this, help, incite, can you run the program and see if you get spikes in your latency correlating to sound skipping etc. I really really want to figure out this problem.

 

I installed that program and ran it for a bit while listening to music... but I didn't experience any glitches in audio in that time. I've had almost steady 1000mu-s latency readout; occassionaly substantially lower or higher, but never as high as the peak in your screenshot.

 

I have the same problem! I even had Dell install a new motherboard because I thought the problem was with the sound card. They installed new speakers too, but it didn't help.

 

This should help you:

Control Panel-------> Device Manager------> Network Adapter-----------------> Double click wireless card-------> "advanced" tab------> "disable bands" (from the menu on the left)--------> "disable 'a' band" (from the drag down menu on the right)

Hopefully SP1 clears this up completely, but that's a pretty dang good fix from what I can tell...

 

note, this only is a "fix" for people with those wireless cards. i have wireless b/g card.

and no, the disable all enhancements in the sound pannel doesnt fix it either. and no, reinstalling the chipset drivers doesnt fix it, and no reinstalling the ACHI drivers doesnt fix it, and no, reinstalling the wireless drivers doesnt fix it, and no, reinstalling the sound card drivers doesnt fix it, and no, reinstalling windows doesnt fix it...

keep trying guys!

 

I had the same problems, and for me new the drivers fixed the problem.

 

which drivers?

 

realtek sound drivers.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/

Might be different depending on who makes your sound cards. This problem has been fixed a while back and a couple newer releases of their drivers have already come out.

 

I see the same problem on Windows XP. So I don't think it is a VISTA problem.

 

Hmmm, thats very interesting. I thought it was related to some vista driver.

What kind of computer do you have?

 

nizzy, it definitely isn't just a Vista problem. i'm on a Vostro 1400 running Windows XP (though it came shipped with Vista, I've since formatted and put a fresh copy of XP on this machine) - and i too suffer from the sound skipping whenever i listen to music

see my long post from a different thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=2733096&postcount=448

 

just so you know, i am using an external sound card from creative.

Do you have a dell wireless card or intel?

Are you using ACHI or ATA mode?

 

Does your dell not have a built in sound card? If it does what happens if you use the built in one? Skipping?

Gary

 

i have the dell 1390 wireless card - no 'a' band.

also, how do i check if i'm using ACHI or ATA?

 

Have figured it out by now?
i've got that problem as well. How come for some of you the solutions listed above have worked but for the eothers they didn't? Is it perhaps a matter of configuration? those of you who managed to stop the skipping, what is your configuration?
Thanks a lot for the help