Up until the last few months it has been working flawlessly.
Hello Simon. There was a bad Dell update in early Feb that caused noise and a stutter. See the 1st section of the Choppy/Skipping Audio FAQ for details.
However that issue produced a glitch about once a minute, so it is probably not what you have. Read through the rest of the FAQ to see other potential problem areas, notably caused by power management, graphics & wireless drivers, and Intel Rapid Storage Technology. About power, you should run on ac current when recording and defeat all power saving schemes. About drivers, sometimes you have to downgrade a driver to fix a problem instead of updating.
This happens whether I am playback via the interface and also through the laptops internal speakers.
The Focusrite has its own DAC/ADC's and uses the Windows native usb audio driver. The laptop's integrated audio has its own DAC/ADC's and uses the IDT audio driver. Because there is such separation between the 2 audio systems, I would rule out the DAC/ADC's and audio drivers as the source of the problem. That leaves other drivers, Windows, or hardware.
My wife is an IT consultant and has updated all the drivers, re-installed everything she could, and replaced the hard drive, which died recently.
Can you suggest anything else we could try?
Without the original hard drive you no longer have the original factory restoration image available, but if your wife created recovery media when the laptop was new, use that to restore the laptop back to the original factory configuration. After doing that the laptop will perform like it used to, for a while at least. Try to limit updates to important ones (mostly security) and try to keep track of them so that if the problem recurs you might be able to identify it with a particular update. [If restoring the laptop does not fix the problem then it is a hardware failure.]
Don't think it's such a good idea to wake up my wife at this hour so will go through it tomorrow and let you know what happens. Got a feeling we might need a new PC!
Jim Coates
4 Operator
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13.6K Posts
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July 14th, 2015 05:00
Hello Simon. There was a bad Dell update in early Feb that caused noise and a stutter. See the 1st section of the Choppy/Skipping Audio FAQ for details.
However that issue produced a glitch about once a minute, so it is probably not what you have. Read through the rest of the FAQ to see other potential problem areas, notably caused by power management, graphics & wireless drivers, and Intel Rapid Storage Technology. About power, you should run on ac current when recording and defeat all power saving schemes. About drivers, sometimes you have to downgrade a driver to fix a problem instead of updating.
The Focusrite has its own DAC/ADC's and uses the Windows native usb audio driver. The laptop's integrated audio has its own DAC/ADC's and uses the IDT audio driver. Because there is such separation between the 2 audio systems, I would rule out the DAC/ADC's and audio drivers as the source of the problem. That leaves other drivers, Windows, or hardware.
Without the original hard drive you no longer have the original factory restoration image available, but if your wife created recovery media when the laptop was new, use that to restore the laptop back to the original factory configuration. After doing that the laptop will perform like it used to, for a while at least. Try to limit updates to important ones (mostly security) and try to keep track of them so that if the problem recurs you might be able to identify it with a particular update. [If restoring the laptop does not fix the problem then it is a hardware failure.]
Simie Cyril
2 Posts
0
July 14th, 2015 07:00
Hey Jimco
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly!
Don't think it's such a good idea to wake up my wife at this hour so will go through it tomorrow and let you know what happens. Got a feeling we might need a new PC!
Thanks
Simon