XPS 15 9500, speakers, distorted/crackling audio

I think it's due to the design of the speaker, also it's hanging down. I'm guessing that at certain frequencies the speaker resonates a bit internally and what you hear is the center of the speaker 'blurting' a bit in its rubber attachment... if that word makes sense. Still waiting for a call from the technician btw, should be today. A good thing might be to play around with a spare set of speakers and see when it happens/stops and what can be done about it in terms of design/the way it's installed...

I hope Dell can help us out here, we'd just be MacGyvering away otherwise, which is a bit of a petty for a premium device.

I have exactly the same problem with my XPS 17, which arrived at the beginning of December. Specific sounds above 60% sound distorted, I reinstalled the whole Windows which didn't improve anything. I have a technician coming to replace speakers next week and I'm a bit sad to read that most probably it will not solve the issue. I love this laptop otherwise but I agree, having to deal with those type of problems in laptop at this price is not acceptable. I will still try to put it upside down to check if it really helps, I'm really curious now.

I examined the speakers of the XPS 15 9500 and there is a rectangle on the side that appears to be a port into the speaker, but it is glued closed. I pried this off and discovered a compartment filled with what looks like very fine sand, probably silicon beads. I am sure this is used for vibration dampening. I expected to find a hollow compartment and a wire that supplies the signal to the drivers. I spilled some by accident onto the table then decided to empty the compartment. I then tested the speakers and the 400 hz vibration was gone. Apparently there is a resonance frequency of this material in the speaker at that frequency. Once emptied even though the 400 hz distortion was gone there were other vibrations at other frequencies, the material dampened that bur once gone the speaker rattles a lot more. I stuffed some paper (TP to be precise) to fill the space and that helped somewhat. I think that surrounding the speaker with foam tape or some other dampening material will help with resonance throughout the laptop enclosure. This will be trial and error. I conclude the silicon (assuming) dampening material was the cause of the 400 hz distortion and removing it will solve that problem but cause another one, other harmonic distortions - however the new problem can be mitigated with dampening materials. 

@keithled  - Many thanks for your great investigation and conclusions! It is indeed very helpful. Since we now know it is 100% due to faulty design of the speakers, it  means there is no solution available at the moment. Let's ALL ask Dell to redesign the speakers and replace our faulty ones with the REDESIGNED ONES ONLY (not with another bad pair, which we all did to no avail). This is the only solution. Good luck to us in this journey! 

Yago,

Following up to see if the information provided resolved the issue? Let us know.

I have this same issue as well and Dell needs to acknowledge this issue as a design flaw, since this seems to be ongoing for 6+ months and audio driver updates has not fixed the issue. For a $3K laptop that is advertised as a multimedia centric laptop, this issue should have been resolved already.

And the audio distortion/rattling can be heard in almost all the content from Music, Podcasts to Movies. It is not something you can simply ignore. 

That being said, I doubt something would be done by Dell escalation to actually resolve this issue since this requires redesign of the speakers and they will likely stall it until 2021 models are launched.

I will be giving another 3 weeks to this when my return window closes, and if there is no resolution I will be returning my XPS and getting X1 Gen3 (Lenovo). I'd prefer to keep XPS since it has better thermals than X1 XG3 and has 16:10 screen, so hopefully Dell resolves this. I am shocked no Pro reviewers on YouTube has mentioned this as an issue...

What resolved this issue for me was connecting to an external speaker ... which means it's a speaker design problem, not software or drivers or BIOS or any of the other stuff I've been trying to chase down for several hours.

At this price point, you'd think Dell A) would have figured this out and taken care of it in the design part of the production process, and B) would have let customers know instead of dancing around it all for months and years.

I like the computer, and it's out of warranty, so I'm keeping it. But it's the last Dell I'll buy.

I have the sound distortion issues also. Had unit serviced 3 times by house call techs, shipped to dell service in TX twice, spent hours on the phone with Dell support. Sadly the problem was not resolved. The speakers are defective - at least in my Dell XPS 15 9500. I finally took a chance and disassembled part of the speaker. There is a sealed compartment with what looks like sand (silicon beads, very small) that serves to absorb vibrations from the speaker. This works well to dampen most resonance but unfortunately creates the 400 hz distortion - about that frequency there is a resonance that these beads vibrate that distorts. if you turn the laptop upside down the distortion goes away. I opened this compartment on speaker and emptied it of these beads. It got rid of the 400 hz issue but caused distortion at many other frequencies (higher ones). I experimented with adhesive backed felt, didn't solve it. I tried spacers made of paper and other materials. No dice. I'm now experimenting with silicon gel (bunga pads from sports, they are very pliable and dense). Problem is this material is too thick. I ordered some thermal pads for NVMe since they are thinner and of similar density. I think the trick is to get the right material and surround the speaker enclosure so that the many resonance frequencies it generates can be properly dampened. Bottom line is the speaker design is flawed for the Dell XPS 15 9500. I tried reaching out to Dell with my findings but I think it's falling on deaf ears. No pun intended.

@DELL-Cares - Lets better not infuriate us even more with your ridiculous questions. 

• Why you don't have an XPS 9500/9700 to test the issue for yourselves? You should try to test what hundreds of users are reporting! By not doing this you just show the lack of respect to your customers and to their hard-earned money.
• Provide video proof that you have at least 1 XPS 9500/9700 that has non-rattling speakers. I bet my last money there is no new XPS that will not rattle, not a single one.

Let’s check if you are able to hear the audio in diagnostic test. To do this, run the hardware diagnostics by following the steps in this video: https://dell.to/39JgdDs. When the prompt for the colored bars appear, click on ‘No’ to fail the test. On doing this, the When you hear the beeps without the distortion, it indicates the speakers are working fine. Exit the diagnostic screen and boot back into Windows to run the audio troubleshooter. You can follow this video for the instruction: https://dell.to/39D6Khb and check if its fixes the issue.

I've got the same problem. Bought XPS 15 9500 around july and had the rattling problem ever since. Now, the only thing is it's actually gotten worse, firstly (out of the box) I had the rattling you described in your post. But since then, the left speaker has gotten even worse (at even lower freqeuencies), which you can see demonstrated in the video.

I've also got a bunch of other issues, but I'll keep this thread to speaker issues only.

Now I woud've returned my unit if I could, but given the circumstances, XPS was my daily driver and I couldn't (for technical reasons) go a day without it, so my return window expired. I also live in a country in which dell doesn't offer on-site repairs and the only dell certified repair center is in another city (the repairs would also take longer than a day). I am planning of getting it "repaired" at the end of this month. (I put repaired in quotation marks since it seems most of the people complaining about the issues with the laptop actually get the same issues after their device got "repaired", making it seem like a design issue, rather than a faulty-component one).

Needless to say, this is my last dell product. If someone I know ever thinks about buying a dell product I'll go out of my way to let them know about the issues I've had.

Wow, you are right! The laptop being upside down completely fixes the issue. This means Dell will need to replace the speakers in everyone's XPS laptop with a better designed solution. It's insane that Dell let this slip all the way through multiple generations of design, even the basic Windows 10 volume change sound distorts! Thank you for finding this out. Dell you should be ashamed for never being able to release a solid product. 

Hi,

Could you share the details requested so that we can proceed on this?

-Gautam.

Just to follow up on my story (and that people can have some laugh) I was supposed to have technician coming this week to replace my speakers. Knew that it will not help, but whatever. It took almost 2 months for the replacement speakers to arrive to Czechia, and... Upon arrival technician discovered that they sent him wrong speakers. Not Dell XPS ones, but some other model. No one knows now when the correct ones will arrive, but more or less in another 2 months. So, the actual Dell guarantee / technical support is basically non existing. This is my first and last Dell ever. 

And btw, putting the computer upside down really helped! It's amazing. How this model even went through the quality check in first place?