XPS

[the.rem]

Hello,

I have a dell XPS 15 9570, and I have big issues with on board and external audio.

HW Spec:

Dell XPS 15 9570, i7 8750H, 4K screen, 16g ram /512g ssd, qualcomm Killer wifi and then intel AC-9260, nVidia 1050 Ti with latest WHQL drivers, bios v1.2.2, all drivers to date as of 2018/15/07

Symptoms:

- audio cracks and pops with system audio when watching videos, listening to mp3/flac, playing games with built-in card,

- audio cracks and pops with  external ASIO soundcard (focusrite scarlett 18i8 2nd gen) when running pro DAW software with 256 samples buffer @48Khz or 512 buffer @96Khz

This can damage external speakers and makes the machine unusable for live audio or even standard multimedia use.

What I did:

- applied all tweaks recommended by my external audio card's manufacturer https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207355205-Optimising-your-PC-for-Audio-on-Windows-10

- ran LatencyMon and found that TCPIP.sys and ndis.sys were causing 4ms DPC latency spikes, followed by ACPI.sys 2ms and dxgkrnl.sys 1.7 ms

- swapped  the qualcom card for an intel AC-9260 which eliminated totally the TCPIP.sys and ndis.sys spikes

- now ACPI.sys and dxgkrnl.sys are still causing 2ms DPC latency spikes

- audio glitches are still present

- disabled all peripherals except for keyboard, integrated graphics, trackpad, screen and storage (I disabled wifi, bluetooth, webcam, nvidia graphics, fingerprint reader, ACPI battery manager, cardreader, fall accelerometer, screen touch, etc.)

- disabled Speed-Step/ SpeedShift and Turbo-Boost, disabled virtualisation support in the BIOS to try to minimize randomness in the behaviour

- disabled fastboot

- ACPI.sys latency is still culminating at 1.7ms and causing audio dropouts with either built-in or external USB asio interface

- I've opened a support ticket over at dell with my premium support, the ticket was automatically closed a week later without anyone getting in touch with me.

I've run out of options and am looking for help.

[s-plus]

@the.rem
Please don't mark this thread as solved! This thread needs more posts and attention.

Any Dell reps here? Come on Dell, this is a major issue, and it's been unresolved for a few generations of XPS 15!
Please fix it. It's unacceptable for such a premium laptop to have a latency of well over 1 ms! Just install LatencyMon and see for yourself that acpi.sys causes huge audio latency.

[Mobron]

All the workarounds on this forum are fine, but not optimal. Since the first XPS laptops the problem is mostly the Killer Wifi. This wifi card is fine for gaming, but terrible for audio production. Just replace it with an intel card and most of your problems will be solved.

Google: dell xps 9570 replace wifi card

You will find tons of instructions.

[s-plus]

It's just not true that replacing your wifi card to Intel's one will fix all your problems. Many people have done it and they STILL have a huge audio latency. The audio latency will get just a bit better by doing it. The MAIN problem is acpi.sys, which is unrelated to the wifi card.

[Mobron]

That is why I said ''most'' not ''all'' problems. Changing the wifi card will do al lot of good. Turning off Bluetooth will also go a long way, as will all kinds of other tweaks. I got a couple of XPSs working just fine for audio production, reaching very respectable DPC latency levels. Do not despair.

This may help as well: https://bandzoogle.com/blog/20-ways-to-optimize-your-windows-10-pc-for-music-production

And ooh yea, I remember that I could make the ACPI latency a lot less problematic by changing the power options a bit. Maybe running at full power while making music will stop the system from changing the processor speed constantly. These constant changes in processor speed could be causing some extra latency. 

[Jeyh]

So do we have any insights about when the fix will be available ? I'm completely underwhelmed by my recent purchase of an XPS 9570 for that precise reason...

[DESman]

Same here! (Hong Kong)

Mine is XPS 15 8th i9 32g Ram 1T SSD, as Dell they just don't know the root cause this problem, and they only is replace my Motherboard and Sound Card, sure the problem is still remain. also please try to close the lid to sleep mode, my XPS will turn it on. 

Ref.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2dbATWNL34
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1DvRz0oHQE

[Caustix]

Yea I'd love to know when too. I mean, £2k+???? Come on Dell!

[RGBR]

I´m thinking of buying one to use with music production, but there seems to have a lot of people on foruns complaining about that. 

[DjangoLives]

I've been using a Dell XPS 9570 (i7, 16gb, 4k) for about five or six months and I'm having the exact audio latency issues that are described here.

Had some small successes with Process Lasso but it doesn't always seem to work, which especially drives me crazy when I need to record audio (I use Cubase). But the latency issues also occur when I simply play some music on Spotify. 

I bought the laptop in The Netherlands and I've been in contact with Dell for the last couple of months. Today I received an email where they say a bios-update that should fix these issues should be released right before Christmas. Fingers crossed!

[RGBR]

I hope they fix it in the next days. I just got mine Dell 9570 and I´m not beeing able to just play guitar with some plugins. I get crack noises. I would like to keep this laptop, but without this fixed, it is unusable for me.