popping/skipping of ripped files

I was experiencing choppy audio every "59" seconds... Disabling 802.11a worked! Thank you very much, Gina! Now I can remove the Vista Anti-Lag program and continue on with life without having to worry about this problem any more! Do you have any technical explanation for this phenomenon? I mean, was it just interference between the a band and the audio chip, or was it something more (or less) complicated than that? I would love to know why it happened. Thanks for the support and help. If you need any more information from me, let me know - I'm still subscribed to this thread via e-mail so I'll keep an eye out for notifications of postings by Dell reps. My service tag thing is in my signature as requested a while back by Rollie.

Actually, it ALMOST worked. It is still popping every once in a while but MUCH, MUCH less often and much less noticeable. I'm going to stick with Vista Anti-Lag to remove it completely, but I'd say that little trick got rid of it about 85% of the way.

But, it was one step closer to completely eliminating the skipping! Keep at it, Rollie and Gina! :)

Okay well I guess I change my mind again. That popping happened even with Anti-Lag, and I think it was due to heavy (albeit instantaneous) system load at certain times, due to what I was doing at the moment. I have since disabled Vista Anti-Lag again, and it is just as good. So, I think disabling the a band worked. Sorry to change my mind twice! :)

Updating the WLAN card driver + disabling the 'a' band has done nothing for me.

Also, my popping is at seemingly totally random intervals, occurring at 0:27, 1:04, 1:12, 1:14, and 2:36 throughout the course of one song.

Message Edited by StereoHeathen on 03-27-2007 06:03 PM

I have a brand new Latitude D620 and I'm also having the random popping noise whenever I run Winamp, Media Player Classic, or anything really. Heck, even the Windows theme that plays when you log on skips every now and then.

I have a Dell 1390 Wireless card and I'm thinking of simply buying an Intel 3945 wireless card since I don't think I've read any complaints regarding that card, just Dell's wireless stuff.

It happens on fresh installs of either Windows XP Pro or Windows Vista Ultimate, with all the appropriate drivers loaded from Windows update or Dell's own service. I've tried the many tricks mentioned in this thread and have seen no success.

Message Edited by Zeromus on 03-28-2007 12:24 AM

M1710 maxed with Draft N 1500 card in a D/Dock running fresh install of Vista Home Premium. I've tested the crackling audio with and without the D/Dock and it makes no difference. Disabling the 802.11a band does absolutely nothing for me. I have intermittent crackling/popping that is most noticeable within games but I can hear it within just about any audio. Some games that I've demonstrated it in are Oblivion, Guild Wars, Half-Life 2, and Titan Quest. I can hear the crackling when I play back videos and music also. It's intermittent but sporadic. I don't have these symmetric intervals that some people are reporting such as every XX seconds. I have tried various drivers for both WLAN and soundcard but the current ones I'm running are from the Dell website and are the latest as of today. One thing worth mentioning is that I had a completely unrelated computer a few months back before purchasing my m1710. The computer was an AW m9700 running Windows XP and I had an identical crackling problem in games. It too runs the sigmatel sound chip but I can't remember the WLAN module. I know that bit of info doesn't help much but I thought it was worth mentioning because the problem was so similar. I sold that laptop after a month and never really troubleshot the issue so I'm not sure what was causing it. The is a frustrating issue though and I hope someone solves it.

Just wanted to give an update...

I don't notice any more pops, and I haven't been using the Vista Anti-Lag program any more - disabling 802.11a seems to have worked for me. I even have had the enhancement "Virtual Surround" enabled this whole time, it doesn't add any pops or clicks even though some people have had to disable all enhancements.

This is Windows Vista Ultimate edition on a Dell E1705 with the Sigmatel audio codec and the Dell Wireless Draft-N 1500 card. If it helps any, I have a Core 2 Duo 2.0ghz, 2gb ram, 100gb 7200rpm hard drive. I also have the Bluetooth module, which seems to work in Vista - I haven't tried it much, but my wireless headphones had no problem connecting and receiving sound (I don't use them often but I used them to test that Bluetooth was working).

My audio driver is called "SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC", version 6.10.0.5343 from 1/12/2007, provider is SigmaTel and it is signed. I can't remember whether it was provided by Dell or came default by Microsoft. One thing to note - in Control Panel, then Sound, and then in the Speakers/Headphones properties window under the Levels tab, it named the subwoofer as "Mono Mix". I have tested it while playing a song and it is definitely the subwoofer, I don't know why it is being called a Mono Mix but I don't really care anyway, I simply set it to 100% and then left it alone. Now that I think about it, I think it is the Windows driver, and perhaps I will try to upgrade to the Dell-provided driver if I find reason to do so. My media buttons work perfectly, I would have thrown a fit by now if they didn't (I LOVE the media buttons, they are one of the best features of this laptop, along with the huge beautiful screen).

My wireless driver is called "Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter", version 4.102.15.61 from 12/19/2006, provider is Broadcom and it is signed. I got it from a third-party site, and I believe there was a link somewhere in these many pages. In the Advanced tab, I have disabled 802.11a by selecting the property called "Disable Bands" and setting it to "Disable 802.11a". I am not using any third-party wireless software, and this is NOT the driver recently provided by Dell (on 3/15/2007). Other than the interference issue, Windows handles the adapter perfectly and I love all of the new features of Vista, especially the whole Public and Private networks thing - very useful, I set my home network as a private network and allow all incoming and outgoing but then networks such as my library network and airport networks are set as Public networks and I set up the Windows Firewall to disallow all incoming connections and sharing and such.

I have no more complaints, and I will probably stop posting and reading this message board soon. Vista works perfectly in all other aspects, and it even seems faster than XP was, because I no longer need my ZoneAlarm Security Suite hogging CPU resources and memory. It has also worked with all of my programs so far, or at least the most recent versions of all of my programs (tip: if a program doesn't work, try right-clicking the shortcut, hit properties, go to the Compatibility tab, and then check "Run this program as an administrator" or Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP2, and that usually fixes problems unless it is really incompatible).

Let me know if there is any other way I can help, but I think I've pretty much covered everything I know about this problem.
~Ricky

Message Edited by tyfoon-thecooldude on 03-30-2007 11:12 AM

Hey guys,

As far as disabling 802.11a: it isn't very intuitive or obvious and it took a lot of plunking around for me to find it, but here it is.

1. Go to "Device Manager", find "Network Adapters" and expand it.

2. Make sure you have "Dell Wireless XXXX WLAN Minicard" (whatever model your adapter is) listed. If you have the generic driver, it may be listed as "Broadcom" or something. If that's the case, download the Dell driver from Dell's website and look again.

3. Right click on "Dell Wireless XXXX WLAN Minicard" and go to "Properties".

4. Under "Properties" go to the "Advanced" tab.

5. In the scroll list on the left called "Property", about 9 options down is an option labeled "Disable Bands". Click on that.

6. Now in the drop-down list on the right labeled "Value" hit the drop-down button. It should give you a default option of "None", but you can choose "Disable 802.11a" or "Disable 802.11g/b".

7. Obviously at this point choose "Disable 802.11a", click "OK" and you should be set.

I've done this and so far it has worked wonders. I put the SigmaTel driver back on (I was using Vista's default driver because it helped a bit) and I'm using the latest Dell 1500 driver. I have heard a click here and there, but nowhere near as often as I did before. I really hope that this works for you guys as well.

Rich

For everyone that's having problems finding the option, make sure you have the latest wireless driver! The default one that "just works" and comes with Windows Vista does NOT have these options, you have to download the better driver (I'm saying this from memory, I could be wrong).

This is the driver version I have. It works with the Dell Draft-N 1500 wireless adapter and Windows Vista; I haven't tried XP, nor have I tried other wireless adapters. I couldn't find the exact site I got it from, but they should be all the same - Broadcom Wireless 802.11n version 4.102.15.61 seems to be the latest version.
http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/NETWORK-CARD/OTHER-NETWORK-CARDS/Broadcom-Wireless-80211abgn-BCM-943xx-Driver-41021561.shtml
or
http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/getFile.asp?id=20988&dscr=Broadcom%20Wireless%20Network%20Driver%20version:%204.102.15.61&uid=154944404
or it is also partway down this page:
http://www.station-drivers.com/page/broadcom.htm

Don't launch the setup by double-clicking the exe. Use a compressed archive program such as 7-Zip (or possibly WinZip or WinRAR) to unzip the exe (I know it's weird, but that exe is actually a compressed file in disguise). You will find some files inside; extract them to a folder. Then, go to Device Manager and right-click your current network adapter driver and then hit Update Driver Software. Click Browse my computer, and then click Let me pick... and then click the Have Disk button. Browse to the folder that you unzipped the files into, and double-click the .inf file that shows up. Then make sure a Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter is selected, and click next and let it install. If there are multiple adapters in the list, just pick the first one (or any of them) and click next.

You probably won't have to restart... I don't remember exactly. Anyway, you should then have the most up-to-date driver version, and then try the steps to disable 802.11a and you should be able to find everything.

If you still can't find everything, perhaps something went wrong. Make absolutely sure you have the driver I am talking about - in the Device Manager, right-click your network adapter and click Properties, and then choose the Driver tab and make sure next to Driver Provider: it says Broadcom, and Driver Version: should say 4.102.15.61 - if not, then you have the wrong driver.

same applies to the 1500 (802.11n), it does A, but no way to disable it. At least in Vista