Latitude E6520 Audio Issues

Sorry to bump, but I still haven't found a solution.  Anyone have any ideas that could help me out here?

Whoops -- I meant Latitude E6410, not Inspiron.

Sorry I don't have any ideas, but I have the same or a similar problem with my Inspiron E6410.  I'm running Windows 7 64 bit and my audio is glitchy with continual dropouts and stuttering, but only on some Internet radio streams -- maybe 6 or 7 out of every 10 streams listed in iTunes' Radio library.  It doesn't matter if I play them through iTunes or directly via the station's website; the result is the same.  Strangely, some streams work just fine.

I've updated to the latest IDT audio driver from Dell's website but it didn't help.  Haven't tried all the other steps I found commonly suggested yet, but the results I see posted by others are not encouraging.  Really would like to know what the deal is with this.

I have similar problems with the audio on my E6520, at first I had drop outs in itunes that were very noticeable. Updating the NVIDIA drivers mostly solved this. It happens a lot when browsing the internet using the wireless adapter and playing music, so I updated the adapter drivers as well, it got better but not totally solved, although this does happen a lot with audio and certain wireless adapters.

The strangest part of this all is that there is that distortion and crackling sound all the time and the occasional crackle sound. I am an ex Audio Engineer and I can tell you that there is something not right with the built in audio of my machine, it may be a grounding issue, it may be I have some bad hardware I can't speculate as to whether or not this is happening on all E6520's but for me it is.

I have disabled the wireless adapter and noticed a slight improvement in the sound but still distorted and muffled. If you have the NVIDIA card make sure optimus is on in the bios and that the drivers are fully up to date.

I have been too busy to contact Dell about this, but I will contact them soon to find out what's going on. I have tested other laptops in the Dell family and they do not exhibit this behavior. I am surprised that I do not see more people posting about this but they probably just called Dell or are not having a problem at all.

I have read some issues with the 90watt power supplies and grounding so who knows if that has something to do with it. improper grounding can easily damage audio components again the lack of grounding is speculation and I cannot confirm it, what I can confirm is that I am also having trouble with audio on my Dell latitude E6520.

The most common problems with audio almost always come from wireless adapters and graphics cards, even ethernet adapters, so make sure all those drivers are fully up to date to get rid of the drop outs. I was able to at least stop the major crackles, pops and drop outs but the distortion is just strange and the irregular crackles seem to possibly be hardware related they do not sound like the average driver conflict to me.

I mean all you can really do to fix audio conflicts is, disable things one by one in device manager and test after each device is disabled, when you find the culprit update it's drivers to see if that resolves it, if it does your set if not try disabling your virus protection, try setting power to high performance and test again. Finally disable speedstep and c states and turbo and all that stuff in bios and try again. If none of that helps it is possibly a hardware issue that can only be resolved by replacing the audio interface or card or by replacing the actual graphics card or wireless card.

On desktops while it's a pain to have to do it it usually is pretty simple in the end, yet on a laptop it's not so easy, my guess is to replace the internal audio they would have to replace the whole motherboard.

Update all your drivers for the Nvidia and the wireless adapter, disable your antivirus and try again I did all that and have no more if any dropouts, Dell replaced my wireless card as well as my motherboard and all seems to be fixed for me. The wireless card still takes up lot's of resources and still may cause some drop outs when browsing the internet, I may actually switch to anther wireless card at some point to see if that helps. Good luck. This really is a nice laptop so  i I hope you work out the issue.

Someone called me and said they are company associated with Dell and microsoft and linksys and said our computer is undergoing alot of problems and asked me to type eventvwr and took me to error lists. Right in the middle he cut off and I cannot call him back. I am really scared that he was one of the hackers. the number was 213226783. Pl email me if this is a real threat and I should not use this computer for internet and get it cheked before logging on to internet.

Someone called me and said they are company associated with Dell and microsoft and linksys and said our computer is undergoing alot of problems and asked me to type eventvwr and took me to error lists. Right in the middle he cut off and I cannot call him back. I am really scared that he was one of the hackers. the number was 213226783. Pl email me if this is a real threat and I should not use this computer for internet and get it cheked before logging on to internet.

I had the same problem. Looks like there is broken audio driver from IDT. I found out a solution, at least it helped me. 1. Uninstall Audio Device driver and software in Device Manager (check box in uninstall windows) 2. Reboot Windows 3. Windows will install its own good driver. before -        High Definition Audio Device CODEC after -            High Definition Audio Device Hopefully it will help.

Thank you! I just tried this and my problems are solved. In my case Windows just installed the same driver after reboot, I guess because I didn't delete it when uninstalling. No matter; the uninstall + reinstall did the trick. I guess the original installation was just bad.

Given how simple this fix was, it's strange that the driver update I did earlier didn't fix the problem. I would have expected it to do essentially the same thing.

I have the same problem with my E6520 running on Win7 x64. A sporadic pops occur when I'm listening to music with media player or winamp. These pops occur sometimes each 3-5-10 seconds, sometimes more rarely. I think that these pops occur more frequently when I'm browsing the internet, but I'm not a 100% sure. I will try reinstalling the audio driver and I hope that will solve the problem. I didn't have such problems with my old Latitude D620 which is a very solid machine and sometimes I wish I hadn't replaced it.

Hi Pavlin,

Please try checking the audio in safe mode. To enter safe mode follow the below steps:

1. Restart the computer.
2. Keep tapping F8 on the Dell Logo Screen.
3. Once the computer enters Advanced Boot Option, select Safe Mode with Networking.
4. Press Enter.

Check if the computer is doing the same thing in safe mode with networking.

If the problem still persists,

1. Uninstall Audio Device driver and software in Device Manager (check box in uninstall windows) and restart the computer.
2. update the audio drivers, use the link below for the audio driver: http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/DriverDetails/Product/latitude-e6520?driverId=T10V6&osCode=W764&fileId=2939901298
3. Click on the link above, select download file and follow the onscreen instruction to complete the installations.

Try the above steps and reply for further help.

I didn't have such problems with my old Latitude D620 which is a very solid machine and sometimes I wish I hadn't replaced it.

Did the old laptop have XP? We first started seeing all of these issues with audio noises with the advent of Vista. In Vista and 7 the operating system architecture has been rearranged to give audio a lower priority leaving it vulnerable to noise, dropouts and glitching. I don't know how audio is going to be treated in 8 but I hope it gets implemented better than in Vista and 7.

If re-installing the audio driver or trying the native Windows audio driver does not help, maybe something in the Chopping/Skipping Audio FAQ will help. It is a list of solutions posted by Dell laptop owners. I don't have one specifically from an E6520 owner but there are some from a bunch of other E series owners.

Hi jimco. Yes my old laptop was running Windows XP x64. I updated some drivers with Dell update tool and I think the audio quality improved a bit and I'm seeing those audio pops rarer. 

Hi Sinatrik,

This workaround resolved my issue.  Thanks for the tip.