XPS 15-9570, Audio crackling and popping

@Dell-Alan D 

Hi I followed your suggestion:

• installing native killer wifi drivers did not help DPC latency as you can see:

• the audio is still popping and crackling
• of course I consider unacceptable changing card on 2000 $ laptop for such a basic feature like "audio", why would I ever bought a premium product in the first place?Considering the large likelihood that doing that would solve nothing, no thank you.
• regarding wdf01000.sys the topic you linked can be summarized with "can be anything, good luck finding out"

I have resolved the issue by uninstalling the Realtek driver.

Go to Device Manager, Sound ... and right click Realtek Audio and select Uninstall device. After the computer is restarted the device reapers (probably with an updated driver) and sound problems are gone (for me).

It is strange, but it helped.

To any Dell tech support employees monitoring this thread,

I don't know if this information helps, but I figure it can't hurt...

On my XPS 15 (9570), I have not experienced this issue much listening to audio up until recently.  I primarily use Win10's Groove player for listening to mp3s.  Normally, I'd get an occasional quiet pop just barely noticeable over the music level, but nothing obtrusive.

Since I still prefer the old-school Winamp player (Winamp v5.61 Lite) for listening to my mp3s, I installed it this weekend and tried listening to my music...  BOY did that exacerbate the issue!!!  Constant crackling and popping in every song when performing other tasks simultaneously, mainly opening new tabs in Google Chrome.  When the webpage download completed, the crackling also stopped.  Only got a few here and there when not doing anything else.

Anyone else see similar performance changes?

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@abragagn wrote:

@Dell-Alan D 

Hi I followed your suggestion:

• installing native killer wifi drivers did not help DPC latency as you can see:

• the audio is still popping and crackling
• of course I consider unacceptable changing card on 2000 $ laptop for such a basic feature like "audio", why would I ever bought a premium product in the first place?Considering the large likelihood that doing that would solve nothing, no thank you.
• regarding wdf01000.sys the topic you linked can be summarized with "can be anything, good luck finding out"

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@abragagn the image you have attached shows that updating the killer drivers has improved your latency issue although it hasn't completely resolved it. Your issues with wdf01000.sys have gone and its now just he network driver that is contributing to it.

For the pops and crackles -when exactly is this happening? Are you able to upload a video to youtube demonstrating these pops and crackles?

Do you use the laptop with any audio equipment or for audio production?

Alan

have the same problem for months now. it "only" occurs with livestreams (facebook or other), youtube videos, podcasts, facebook videos. with gaming its ok and spotify.

any help from dell?

This took a week of my time, very frustrating. XPS laptops do not like Windows 1809 fullstop.
No way to make the machine running without glitching on ANY audio interface whether this is the internal speakers or USB 2, USB 3, Thunderbolt 3 or FireWire.
CPU usage is also way higher compared to 1803.
Dell Support Assist crashes with blue screen on launch when it's the only application installed after a clean Windows 1809 install.

So I've manually installed each driver one by one and glitches are happening every 3 to 5 mins on ANY software that plays back via both WDM, Wave, DirectX or ASIO drivers.

Dell what's going on with this? Any insight?

Windows 1803 is totally stable and glitchless. Now I'm just afraid to install drivers as I need this machine to play music live and glitches are not allowed to be part of the show. The machine runs super smooth without any driver installed and only Windows 1803 drivers. Should I try to get a blue screen by downloading Dell Support Assist?

Any official info on this is more than appreciated.

Cheers

@Dell-Alan D 

Issues with wdf01000.sys are not gone. There are so many processes that create problems that overlap each other and only a few are reported.

I can run LatencyMon at any time and get a different problem, this system it's this much broken:

The popping happens all time all the times, I simply need to plug the headphone and the statics starts. I cannot make a video because it's impossible to record audio from the headphones. It is clearly software/driver related since with ubuntu I have zero issues whatsoever.

I do not use  audio equipment, I simply would like to watch a video without any problem with my 2k$ premium laptop.

Thanks mate, it worked!

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@gatemaster2019 wrote:
Hi, I have the same problem with a XPS15 - 9570. Bluetooth Audio is not usable. I tried Brose QC35 II / Sennheiser Presence / Airpods 2 and some others. Within 0,50 m beside the XPS the quality is almost ok. But if I increase the distance to 1m I cannot understand something. Audio is crackling. My XPS is on the right of me. If I wear the Sennheiser Presence on the left ear, quality ist really poor. Switching to the right ear (decrease of distance) the quality is again OK. My iPhone and my XIAOMI MI8 have a transmitting distance of more than 10 meters around my work area (walls between). The XPS looses connection when I leave my room. In my opinion this is a hardware problem. And I have 2 XPS. One for work and one private. Both have the same problem.

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@gatemaster2019 that issue sounds more like it could be driver related compared to the issues being described in this thread. I would recommend trying the latest Dell driver, released a fortnight ago, for the system from here - https://www.dell.com/support/home/tw/en/twbsd1/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=8pptm&oscode=wt64a&productcode=xps-15-9570-laptop

If that fails to address the issue you could try the bluetooth driver direct from Killer themselves. The drivers used depends on what version of the card you have installed the 1535 or the 1550. Without your service tag I can't confirm the exact model of card you have. You should be able to confirm this yourself by checking your warranty and components list on the support site - https://www.dell.com/support/home/tw/en/twbsd1/product-support/product/xps-15-9570-laptop/configuration

Here are the links to the two Killer drivers:
https://support.killernetworking.com/software/ click on the Bluetooth section and pick what driver you need based on the model of wireless / bluetooth combo card you have.

Alan

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@abragagn wrote:

@Dell-Alan D 

Issues with wdf01000.sys are not gone. There are so many processes that create problems that overlap each other and only a few are reported.

I can run LatencyMon at any time and get a different problem, this system it's this much broken:

 

The popping happens all time all the times, I simply need to plug the headphone and the statics starts. I cannot make a video because it's impossible to record audio from the headphones. It is clearly software/driver related since with ubuntu I have zero issues whatsoever.

I do not use  audio equipment, I simply would like to watch a video without any problem with my 2k$ premium laptop.

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@abragagn if updating the drivers and BIOS have not resolved the issue the next logical troubleshooting step would be to go with a clean install of the operating system and only install the latest version of the drivers rather than frequent updates.

Alan

FINALLY, after weeks of figuring this out, one of the newest drivers on here fixed my issue. Not sure which one though but it's either Realtek USB GBE (2019-06-04) or Realtek High Definition Audio Driver (2019-05-23). It took 2 restarts.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/tw/en/twdhs1/product-support/product/xps-15-9570-laptop/drivers?os=wt64a

Can confirm. I updated to the latest Realtek High Definition driver by allowing Windows to search for the best driver and the problem seems to have been resolved.