XPS 710 Vista Ultimate 64-bit Sound Crackling and Distortion

Well don't feel alone as this is not an isolated issue. there are perhaps a dozen or so threads buried here as well as some on the Creative site.

Basicly there are only a few options. If you have the latest drivers for both the video and sound card there is not much more on that front.

You can try moving the sound card into a different slot that might change the irq. There are no ACHI bios setting and never has been

You can switch to a different  brand sound card. There are many reports of this as the best solve.

You can also try switching to the onboard sound and this is the second most best solution.as it is the cheapest.

I myselft have never had this issue and other report the same while there are countless others who do and have opted for one of the two above changes.

Thanks for reply and the suggestions - I had hoped that by waiting for a couple of years I'd have missed these kind of problems.

I've also read that people installing vista with more than 4GB ram installed have problems and wonder if you've come across that - mine originally came with 2GB (2x1GB)

Dell's support website does have another driver for the X-Fi Gamer card which in the release notes mentions issues surrounding systems running over 4-gb RAM and just wondered if you had heard anything along those lines.

I checked out Creative's website and noticed a recently released BETA driver for the sound card but this also didnt resolve the problem.

I'll try as you suggest to swap around the sound card to see if windows allocates a different IRQ value

At the moment it's not really usable with the sound being so bad so may have to admit defeat and go back to good old faithful XP Media Centre 2005

Thanks

like I mentioned I have 4 gigs and a Dell Creative X-FI Xtreme Music and have not experienced this course you are on a differnt motherboard so that may also play a role.

I would try the onboard possible as a last resort before switching back to XP. Vista to me is so far superiour.

Yes the 710 uses the 590 chipset and the 720 uses the 680 chipset. There is nothing wrong with the 710 mb. It was just that when the 700 came out Dell did not really state the whole truth with their 590 chipset. so as a resolve they offered the upgrade to those who wanted it.

And to add more to the sound issues also affecte the 420,700,630 too.

Just to update - I've enable the onboard sound and now I'm getting crystal clear sound!!!

I also got a call from a Dell XPS technician who was actually pretty helpful and told me that as you said in your original reply this is a common problem and has most recently affected the XPS 730 which they have released a BIOS update that has apparantly resolved the problem

Apparantly they've past this case off to Dell R&D who may look at releasing a BIOS patch for the 710 that may perminently fix the error

You mention that your XPS has a different motherboard to mine, are you aware of any issue's with the 710 board as I've read a lot of posts about motherboard replacement program and if there was an issue this could be another area dell support could look at resolving the problem.

Thanks

i've just upgraded my system to 4gb. looking around on the internet it seems there is a issue with the x-fi sound card and vista 64-bit with 4gb or more ram. any one have more news on dell releasing an update for the 710?

Good News. After much searching I have found a driver that works with my XPS 710 and X-Fi sound card.

http://www.youp-pax.org/viewthread.php?tid=636&extra=page%3D1

I uninstalled the card from device manager and also cleared the drivers useing drive sweeper. then installed this driver. everything works i have sound again. Now if I can just get sound also working in Windows 7, everything will be fine.

Buggs

Try this driver for your sound. Worked for me gave back full 5.1 surround in win 7