Distorted audio on XPS 13

Yeah I experienced the exact same problem multiple times. The only temporary way to fix it is to close the program. Could someone else shed some light on this?

Hi 

Thank you for writing to us!

We would suggest that both of you with similar issues ,kindly update the drivers to the latest .

Kindly also check that does this happen only when you play live streaming videos ,also check if this issue occurs when you use external speakers or headphone.

Check under device manager if the audio drivers have a yellow marking on them .

Kindly private message the service tag to the system.

Thanks

Robin 

If you go in to control panel and go to Dell audio and turn MAXXAUDIO off is it any better? I find the speakers sometimes crackle slightly with it turned on. 

I have exactly the same problem. Changing settings for Maxxaudio does not help.

I have exactly the same problem on a 2015 XPS 13, good idea recording it.

I have updated the drivers already and the problem still comes and goes on its own, really annoying. Any help, Dell?

Does it make any difference to anyone if the volume is controlled from another source.  Such as, turn down the volume on the computer and increase it on You Tube or whatever is playing the sound?

When I use Netflix I can sometimes stop the playback, back it up, and start it again and it clears up, but I don't have an XPS 13..  The 17 seems to work OK so far.

You might watch the CPU utilization in Task Manger or the Resource Monitor to see if there is any correlation with it and the sound.

No, that doesn't make a difference for me

I have the same issue. It occurs when I've had my laptop on for about 8 hours.

I don't use headphones or speakers so its purely happening from the internal speakers.  It gets worse and worse over time, until you reboot, so must be a software problem?  I've updated my drivers repeatedly and ran all the dell updates when prompted.

 A reboot works, but it's really not ideal.  I've been looking for an answer for this for some time, its disappointing for such a high quality laptop and when I come to replace the laptop, I will have to look elsewhere unfortunately.

Same issue here. It appear randomly with the speaker or with the headphones, and it disappear if I pause the video for 10-20 seconds. Sometimes it happens often sometimes not, for instance I managed to see an entire episode of Daredevil on Netflix.

I have the latest driver and the latest BIOS, I would like to try the default Windows 10 driver because seems that the issue does not appear, but I used it only for a small amount of time because I need the headphones and they don't work with the basic Windows' driver.

Can someone help us?

Sorry for my bad english.

I have the same exact issue. It's something with the sound card. Coming from both speakers and headphones. I used to have to go into the sound properties and change from 24bits to 16bits. This only fixed it temporarily and now sometimes doesn't fix it at all. Now having to reset my computer each time, to fix it.

It's getting annoying to have to reset my computer each time I want to fix my sound, when it starts doing this.

My computer:

XPS 9343

Windows 10 Home

Sound Card:

Intel Smart Sound Technology

Driver: 8.4.2.105

I'd just like to point out that this issue was NEVER resolved for me by Dell. They updated my drivers and that made the noise go away for a few months but it came back soon after. When you buy a $1500 laptop you at least expect to be able to have decent sound on it.

When you call them all they do is tell you to update your drivers and that may fix it for a little while but this is definitely not the solution. There is definitely a problem with their hardware. I will personally never purchase another Dell laptop. I only wished I listened to my friend at the time and bought a Macbook instead. Dell proved to be the biggest waste of money for me.

I have been listening to music on my iPod using Apple's Bluetooth headset and hear distortion in situations of higher vocal frequencies and higher volumes.

It should be pointed out, a Surface Book is around $1000 more that the equivalent Dell System.  I looked at that, but no way to check for something like music quality.  It is using the 6th generation processor, so hard to compare..

I wish I could tell you what was happening in your situations, but since I am not seeing it, I cannot track it down.  Whether it might be related to memory or processor speed/utilization or even specific codecs, would be nice to know.

Same here, although Dell did try. I had engineers out twice replacing various parts and still the problem did not go away. In the end Dell gave up and gave me a refund. I got a Surface Pro 4 instead which has been fantastic, although slightly lower spec. I still really do love the XPS13 design though, would love to get one if I knew it would be trouble free.

My problem occured to any sounds not just music, so even windows notification sounds. In my opinion it is almost definitely a hardware issue but Dell did try swap the speakers and the mainboard on my XPS and still the problem remained.