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Windows Vista Dell M1710 SigmaTel HD Audio Crackle & Popping!

Discussion in 'Legacy Windows' started by fliersrr, 2008/11/22.

  1. 2008/12/03
    mattman

    mattman Inactive Alumni

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    I haven't seen one of those before, sounds hopeful :rolleyes:. Let us know how it goes.
     
  2. 2008/12/07
    fliersrr

    fliersrr Inactive Thread Starter

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    USB Stereo Sound Adapter Came.

    The USB Stereo sound adapter came. I installed it and it still has all the crackle and popping the normal sound had. This means the USB path is still affecting the sound.

    Not sure what to try now.

    :confused:
    Marty
     

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  4. 2008/12/08
    mattman

    mattman Inactive Alumni

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    My thought is that the audio controller is having the problem. Some of my suggestions were to use a different controller.

    You have changed to 64bit Windows. You need 64bit drivers (x64). SigmaTel is closed down. What are you going to do?

    Matt
     
  5. 2008/12/15
    fliersrr

    fliersrr Inactive Thread Starter

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    XP vs XP Media Center

    Hello again,

    I realize I changed the O/S from x32 to x64 bit and now my own fix will not work. This I knew might happen. Also knew it might because so many people have different solutions or workarounds.

    I have spent a lot of time trying to narrow down a workaround for the x64 Vista with no luck.

    I read on the web some people never had this problem until they went to Vista. So here is my question.

    I am currently re-installing XP MCE that came with the Dell M1710 and will try hard to get the sound workarounds to work. But was wondering if the MCE edition is different than the XP as far as the IRQ assignments, etc?

    Thanks,
    Marty
     
  6. 2008/12/15
    fliersrr

    fliersrr Inactive Thread Starter

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    I am flabbergasted!

    Well I re-installed XP MCE edition that came on the Dell M1710. By quickly looking at the MCE edition it looks just like XP with an add on.

    This laptop came new with the audio crackling and popping (right out of the box) so bad I could not stand it. I have also tried re-installing XP MCE once before, but did not try very hard to get rid of the problem as I really did not get this laptop for use with XP.

    Well after re-installing XP MCE a third time so I could try and fix the sound, it works perfectly without any need for fixing.

    I just let Windows Update bring it up to Service Pack 3

    Still no audio problems.

    I am flabbergasted! :rolleyes: If the audio goes bad I will re-post any changes.

    Thanks for everyones help. Maybe I will play with it again when Windows 7 comes out.
     
  7. 2008/12/15
    dobhar Lifetime Subscription

    dobhar Inactive

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    Hey fliersrr...right on...glad to hear that your not hearing the "crackle" sound... :)

    As for my M1710 the fix I did earlier has been holding up so far although I do get an error when trying to access the StigmaTel control panel...no biggie though...just glad no "crackle "... :)
     
  8. 2008/12/16
    mattman

    mattman Inactive Alumni

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    If you think Win XP SP3 may have done the trick, Vista SP2 is on the drawing board. If you had a spare hard disk drive to install it on, you could test it.

    Anyway, it sounds like a large weight off your shoulders :)

    Matt
     
  9. 2008/12/16
    fliersrr

    fliersrr Inactive Thread Starter

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    Switching to Vista x32bit

    :( The crackling came back after a few hours of rebooting.

    I also noticed the display was not as near crisp as with Vista. I loaded the newest nvidia driver and still was not happy with the XP display. Everything seems just slightly less polished. I send out the signal to a larger LCD and it is very noticeable.

    I have decided to return to Vista 32bit today. This was the only O/S that I was able to get rid of the popping and crackling all together.

    I let you know how it goes.

    Marty
     
  10. 2008/12/29
    fliersrr

    fliersrr Inactive Thread Starter

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    Just can't find a workaround for Vista 64bit

    Hello All, Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

    I have had a lot of time lately to play with this problem. What is weird is I re-installed the 32bit version of Vista and I had the problem and could not get rid of it this time. So I decided if I have to live with this problem, I might as well have the O/S of my choice, Vista 64bit.

    I re-installed Vista 64 bit and tried every know workaround including XP driver in compatibility mode. Even tried a different faster Hard drive. Nothing helps.

    I decide to search the web to see if the newest Dell M1730 had audio problems. Just as I suspected. People are complaining of the same popping, crackle.

    Not sure where to go from here. I really don't feel it is the audio driver. I have tried a USB device for the audio and it still has all the same sounds. It used a C-Media USB Device Driver. It is almost like a pulse or strobe interferes with the audio causing the skipping and popping.

    My wife’s computer is a Dell 1525 and uses the same Sigmatel audio and has no problems at all.

    There has to be a reason this upper line of Dell computers have this audio popping, skipping. :confused:

    Marty
     
  11. 2008/12/29
    mattman

    mattman Inactive Alumni

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    Good feedback on your efforts, pity that they have not been fruitful :(

    Different hardware arrangement. The XPS 1710 has a built-in sub-woofer. If I saw the correct information, the 1710 has "microphone-in connector, stereo headphones/speakers connector ", the 1525 has a digital output connector.

    I tried looking up the BIOS settings, but can't find them. I would go into the BIOS and see what hardware can be disabled. I would see if the Sigmatel audio controller could be disabled, then try the USB audio again.

    This seems to be quite a widespread problem. I would expect that a system manufacturer that had these problems would offer a recall if they had a solution. Maybe it is a design fault and there is no solution (there certainly doesn't seem to be any single quick-fix from what we have covered).

    Think about emailing them
    http://support.dell.com/support/top...are/contact_technical_support?c=us&l=en&s=gen
    I suppose the answer will be that it needs to be sent in for repairs and you are the only person on the planet that has this problem :D

    Maybe it's supposed to sound like that :D I shouldn't joke, but try to keep your spirits up.

    Here's hoping you find something. Keep watching the Dell forums.

    Matt
     
  12. 2008/12/29
    dobhar Lifetime Subscription

    dobhar Inactive

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    So sorry that you are still having issues Marty... :(

    Coincidently I just downloaded the latest Sigmatel driver from the Dell's "Drivers and Downloads" site yesterday as I noticed that they had a new Vista (32 Bit\64 Bit) driver dated October 24, 2008...Version 6.10.0.5614, A09. The last Vista driver was January 30, 2007...Version 6.10.0.5343, A02. As a side note the XP driver is still dated April 27, 2007.

    I removed the old driver that I installed (Per previous post) and installed the new driver...so far no snap, crackle, pop but it's only been a day....Keeping my fingers crossed.

    Did you happen to also install the Creative Sound Blaster Software that came with your Laptop? I just reinstalled that (Audigy) prior to this post and again so far no issues after a couple reboots.
     
  13. 2008/12/30
    fliersrr

    fliersrr Inactive Thread Starter

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    Hello Kent,

    No I did not get the software you talk about with my laptop.

    I just un-installed all audio drivers and software. I then went through the registry and deleted anything that said Sigmatel. I installed the newest drive you talked about. I still have the popping etc.

    Thanks for trying,
    Marty
     
  14. 2008/12/31
    cheezy

    cheezy Inactive

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    driver combination

    Hi All,

    Dell D820, Windows XP

    I've been fighting this problem for years and it recently got so bad I couldn't stand it any longer. So, I threw it out the window. It didn't fix the problem but I felt better. Just kidding of course.

    I used to get an occasional "pop" but it recently got so bad that it sounded like someone was running the needle across a vinyl record.

    Everything in this thread and others were tried to no success. I ended up loading the latest Dell drivers for just about every device. Snap, crackle, pop and skip still existed. So I rolled back to an old audio driver and although there is still an occasional pop, it is faint and a gynormous improvement. It's definetly worse with iTunes compared to WMP playing mp3's. My daughter had to upgrade to itunes ver 8 for her itouch at Christmas so maybe that is my culprit.

    The driver I used is from dell, labeled R147073. Searching Dell for R147073 produced a different version (6.10.0.5343,A02) than the file I had.

    This is the contents of the version.txt file from R147073 I had.
    Title : Audio:SIGMATEL STAC 92XX C-Major HD Audio Driver
    Version : A06
    OEM Name : SIGMATEL
    OEM Ver : 5.10.0.4995
    Computers : MM061, MXC051, MXG061, MXP061;
    Inspiron - ME051, B120, MP061, MXC061;
    Latitude - D420, D620, 120L , D820, D520;
    Precision - M65, M90;
    XPS - MXC062
    Oses : Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Media Center EditionWindows XP Professional
    Languages : Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese-S, Chinese-T, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish
    Created : Wed Jul 12 16:01:06 CDT 2006

    Although I could/should move to a newer driver to see if it gets worse again, I fought this for too many hours to risk not getting back to where I am now. I'm sure if you have this problem you understand.

    Best of luck,
    cheezy
     
  15. 2009/01/01
    dobhar Lifetime Subscription

    dobhar Inactive

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    Hi Marty...

    I was crusing through the Vista Forums for info on the new Vista Codec Package Ver 5.06 and came accross this post (2nd reply)...
    You can also try updating your Sound & Audio codecs by installing the Vista Codec Package
     
  16. 2009/01/01
    hawk22

    hawk22 Geek Member

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    Hi reading through this might help you understand the problems you are facing.

    I am not the Author of this Article

    I have what is a simple question, though I have been unable to find an answer
    as yet; the question is in 2 parts:

    1/ How do I tell Vista that I want to change the IRQs that Vista chooses to
    assign to hardware devices?
    2/ How do I tell Vista in what priority order I want these IRQs handled?

    Strictly the second part is not needed if you can change all the IRQs (and
    you know their fixed priority order), but it would be useful.

    The PC in question is a modern device with both ACPI and APIC, using only
    PCI devices (the COM/PARALLEL devices on the legacy bus are turned off).

    This means there are 24 available IRQs - far more than there are devices
    needing them.

    Unfortunately the Vista resource broker lamely decides to share just a few
    IRQs between the most resource intensive devices. Although all the devices
    are CAPABLE of sharing IRQs, this does not mean that sharing is DESIRABLE.

    For example, the sound chip shares an IRQ with the main hard disk. Given
    that Vista has reduced the audio buffering available to better support
    realtime music, making it share an IRQ with a resource-intensive device like
    a disk or network card leads to appaling sound breakup - not very helpful.

    Similarly, the USB bus and 1394 bus have Isochronous modes which can/will
    fail if forced to share IRQs with inappropriate resources.

    Just to avoid wasting anyone's time, these resources cannot be changed by
    switching slots (they are all on the motherboard), nor can they be changed in
    the bios. The Vista HAL happily assigns resources using its poorly thought
    out algorithms, and as there are no conflicts, the device manager does not
    allow any changes.

    I'm fairly sure these IRQ changes SHOULD be possible; it's just a question
    of whether Microsoft
    are restricting this information, or whether they have
    been drinking their own cool-aid too much and not put this manual adjustment
    capability in.

    Manually setting and prioritising IRQs in Windows Vista
    ________________________________________


    I don' think there is any easy way of manually assigning interrupts in
    Vista, short of editing the registry, which without guidance from the
    mobo manufacturer would be very dangerous. If there are true device
    conflicts, Vista will let you change resources like IRQs in the Device
    Manager. But you only have legitimate sharing, not conflicts.

    Your only hope is to uninstall the drivers
    for all the onboard devices
    that you can, shut down, reboot and then disable the same onboard
    devices that use IRQs in the BIOS. Reboot and re-enable them in the BIOS
    one by one to see if the IRQs change. Obviously you can't disable any
    devices needed for booting, but floppy disk controller, audio, USB
    (assuming your mouse and keyboard
    aren't USB) and Firewire controllers
    are good examples ones that can be disabled.

    The only other possibilities are to try changing the "Plug and Play OS "
    option in the BIOS or to see if the mobo has a BIOS upgrade. You could
    try a fresh install, but I suspect that would be a big hassle and prolly
    wouldn't work anyway.

    Is it possible that your sound problems are not related to the IRQ
    sharing? One way to test it is to disable onboard sound and buy (or
    borrow) a cheap sound card.

    Now I would like to just mention that I had a problem with my Canon Scanner that would not communicate with Vista after many hours of downloading and uninstalling and re-installing drivers without any change.
    I went back into the BIOS and changed the
    PCI 1 IRQ Assignment from Auto, to 7 and this fixed the problem. So far anyway I have been scanning about 150 images over some 8 days and I turn my system off every night and it is still working great.
    I use USB speakers on my Vista Ultimate 32 setup and it works fine.
     
    Last edited: 2009/01/01
  17. 2009/01/13
    fliersrr

    fliersrr Inactive Thread Starter

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    M1710 Sound Fixed, Final Thoughts, etc.

    :) I am happy to say I purchased a Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card and all my audio problems are gone! I purchased the model 70SB095000004
    http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=208&product=17988

    I have the output of this card plugged into my external speakers and sub-woofer via the mini RCA stereo out jack. You can select to use this jack as a headset or audio out jack. The software that comes with the unit is also amazing. To name one feature is an equalizer.

    This post is not to boost quality of the sound card, but to let others know this Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card and my M1710 with Vista 64 bit work great together.

    Final thoughts on the Sound problems with the Dell M1710:
    All of the workarounds do help to some degree, and certain workarounds work better on different O/S versions.

    One note to mention here:
    The external USB sound card did NOT work as a fix with any version of windows including 32bit and 64bit of XP/Vista. This is probably due to the cause of the audio seams to be in the USB polling is causing the audio to skip, pop and crackle. This is why disabling one of the USB controllers worked so well in a previous posting.

    Final Conclusion:
    Try all the nice help everyone has given in the previous posting. I know there is a lot of them to read, but maybe you will not need to spend the money on an external sound card. BUT if you require a permanent FIX to the audio problem, then I can say the Sound Blaster board I mentioned above worked perfectly for me. I know it was expensive, but I had to get my sound to work. Remember this is not just a workaround to get the sound to be just acceptable, it is a FIX for the unfix-able sound issues with the M1710.

    One final comment on the Sound Blaster board. It does stick out of the laptop about 1.5 inches. For me this is no problem since I do not take it mobile. It does require external speakers or you can use the supplied headset.

    I want to thank everyone for contributing. I still am amazed on all the nice people and the nice help I have received.

    Thank you!
    Marty
     
  18. 2009/01/14
    dobhar Lifetime Subscription

    dobhar Inactive

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    Nice Marty...I'm so glad you got a something that works for you. Who knows If the sound on my M1710 borks again I may have to go the route you went and purchase this card... :) *Thumbs Up*
     
  19. 2009/01/17
    fliersrr

    fliersrr Inactive Thread Starter

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    Urgent Update to all previous post.

    :rolleyes:

    Hello all,

    After enjoying my new found clear sound for a few days now, I decided to pick up all the boxes, CDs etc. I was looking for the CD that came with the new Sound Blaster card, it was inside the laptop. I took it out and cleaned up.
    Went to use my laptop and found the sound crackling, popping, etc as bad as ever.
    I could not believe it. All I did was take the CD out of the drive. I said this can't be, I put the CD back into the drive, stopped the auto-play for installing the software, went on the web and tried some music/videos and it is all crystal clear!
    I am going to try later to remove the new sound card and see if leaving any CD in the bay will correct the popping. Could a fix be this easy? I will update soon.

    Marty
     
  20. 2009/01/17
    fliersrr

    fliersrr Inactive Thread Starter

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    M1710 Sound FIX !

    :)

    It is a simple as inserting a CD in the drive bay! Once the CD-ROM drive has a CD of any kind in it, and then you start a new video or music on the web the M1710 is Crystal clear with no popping, crackling, or skipping!

    I can't believe it has come down to this simple fix after all I have gone through.

    I have tested it over and over. Remove the CD and you get popping, leave out the CD and you get popping. Leave the drive door open and you get popping. Leave a CD in the drive and everything is clear as a bell!

    Final thoughts:
    It appears the popping, skipping is coming from the polling the system is doing to see if the DVD/CD-ROM drive bay has a disc in it.
    I even noticed when the music is playing fine from say youtube web site and I open the CD-ROM door the pop it makes.

    Hope this helps others.

    Marty
     
  21. 2009/01/18
    fliersrr

    fliersrr Inactive Thread Starter

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    I decided to see if I could find anything on this drive I have. Sure did. It seems at least one other person wrote about this drive and came up with two solutions. One leave the CD in the drive, or flash the drive's firmware. here is his article:
    http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/18043674.aspx

    Interesting stuff.
     

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