XPS 15 9500, speakers, distorted/crackling audio

https://www.amazon.de/RTDpart-Laptop-Lautsprecher-Dell-06NVTX-6NVTX/dp/B08VJ688H8

i think ordering this... does someone tryed with replacement speaker ??

meanwhile ... this EQ setting minimize the distortion

that is definitely not a solution! but makes it temporarily more bearable

hi @keithled  ...

"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. "

do you still working on this? any process with damping matierials? do you have photos made from the inside of the speakers? 

@all does someone bought the replacementspeaker link posted in thread? are the better? or do they have the same problem?

I fixed the issue by:

1. remove the beaded dampener material from the speaker. There is a small compartment with a covering that can be removed. Once removed the material spills out like fine sand.

2. I used silicon gel pads as a dampening material to limit the harmonic distortion the speaker enclosures create - which is a tremendous amount. 

These speakers produce loud sound and they are wide-ranging. It's impressive the base they are capable of. But at a cost, the enclosure is very lightweight and thin, and they rattle around like a son of a gun. In a pinch you can use the thermal pads that M.2 SSD's use, get thick ones. I tried to surround the speakers with dampening material. It did the trick now it only makes a moderate amount of vibrations/distortion - which is characteristic of most small devices.

I have to say I'm tremendously disappointed with Dell engineering regarding this issue. The new XPS is such a great device but plagued with easy to fix issues like speaker distortion and the wobbly trackpad (which I also had).

I have a 3 week old machine and I find odd that I didn't really notice the issue first when I took the machine out of box. I'm starting to think removing the back plate once to fix wobbly trackpad issue might have made things worse, but unsure. Or could it be a firmware/windows/driver -updates? Unsure. Interested to still hear if someone has simillar issues or comes up with a fix. Playing with the MaxxAudio software can kind of decrease the crackling sound a little bit but I hate the sound tone on music I listen to.

Its the speakers that are the problem.

See the video below for proof.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQnABiQIluA&t=1s

@Cresswer Fully agreed. The issue is with the speaker unit itself and it is not due to bottom case/cover. I took mine apart and I can hear the speaker itself rattle hanging by itself outside of laptop body with just the speaker cable like it is shown in the video from your link.

I have the same problem with my Dell AIO 3477 and it's driving me crazy!

Thanks for being persistent with this issue. I can confirm that I have the same issue on my XPS 9500 as well. I checked with Dell Support here locally and I was basically told that they cannot do anything about it after a standard HW diagnostic test for the speakers. I have now recorded the crackling/distortion audio from standard windows notification and have forward to the Dell Support team. 

Lets see the response from Dell Support.

BTW, I also have the wobbly/loos trackpad issue and am expecting the palm rest to be replaced by Dell. Hopefully within a week.

Hi,

I used to have the same issue for 8 months trying to solve it, but I never found the answer. When I was using the earplugs the issue was solved, but without earplugs the problem still appearing. 

So today I found the problem by myself. Just try to put your finger blocking the tiny left hole behind the mouse pad. There are 2 tiny holes working as microphone. When I block that microphone, the audio have crackling and distorted. 

The solution was cleaning the hole of the microphone to clean inside it. After that, when I put my finger blocking the hole, the sound still working very well.

I hope this easy fix solve a lot of head pain of customers of Dell XPS.

Good luck! They replaced my palm rest and trackpad because the clicking stopped working. It is only slightly better, I mean at least I can click again but there is still a wobble. 

Exactly! Turning the freaking laptop upside down stops the crackling, and @DELL-Cares  tells me the issue is with the Windows notification sounds. 

When I tell them my huge desktop speakers at full volume do not crackle, their response is to turn my volume down on my laptop. I will be selling this piece of junk and will only have Dell laptops again if they come from work, never paying for a Dell machine again. 

Hey Dell Jesse L, any updates on this?  Are you guys going to stand behind the product?