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.

[CharleeBangs]

Same issue with latency here on my XPS 13 9360. I had to cancel two gigs because of these latency issues that started to appear after the 28th of June. Before then my XPS was working fine. 

I've played £1,5k for this laptop and it is currently letting me down massively. I've tried all the different suggestions (changes in power plan settings, disable the cpu boost options through the bios, checked all drivers are updated) but still no luck. 

[catcalledmightymouse]

I am also having these severe latency issues associated with acpi.sys and it is impossible to run my DAW (Reaper) without pops/crackles, despite every attempt to optimise for recording.  My laptop is a Dell Latitude 5591.  Given the multi-user issue with this, it would be great if Dell could provide an update ASAP. 

[glittle.sd]

Just bought a Precision 7740 which looks on paper like a really good music production machine.  Dissapointingly however. LatencyMon is showing regular and frequent ACPI.sys dpc latencies on this machine too.  Been looking all over the net trying all kinds of suggestions, but nothing to fix the ACPI latency so far.  Is it solidly fixed on the XPS now?

I posted this over in the "mobile workstation" forum:

https://www.dell.com/community/Precision-Mobile-Workstations/Precision-7740-still-acpi-sys-latency-i...

Unfortunate.

[DellRowBoat]

Latency is not fixed for the Dell XPS 9560 .  The latest BIOS Version: 1.16.0 claims to make improvements to address ACPI.sys latency.  However it appears to be no better, getting 6500usec peaks.

Looking more like a hardware issue which is not being addressed 2 years on.

[One of the frustrated]

The issue is, by no definition of the word, fixed... Problems are accumulating and the end of the warranty is quickly approaching. If I were a more cynical person I'd wonder if this was a coincidence.

[justmakeitworkpls]

I just want to play some rocksmith but the audio latency is ridiculous. Used other laptops and this problem doesn't exist. 

Do the latency issues still prove to be a problem when using an external sound card/interface?

[DellRowBoat]

If you want to do real time audio, a second hand Apple Macbook Pro is a much better option.

[Music_Monk]

Hey, I'm facing ACPI Driver latency, and to be honest, so far DELL has not been of any help. What did you finally do?

[DJ5D]

I've been doing Pro Audio for decades- at this point I'm an expert-level system tuner, and I purchased a Dell G7 7790, which is a great laptop in almost every respect. However, after wasting nearly a month of my life trying to solve the audio glitches related to the ACPI.sys issue, I've come to the conclusion that as of Sept 3 2019, this is an unsolvable problem. Using Process lasso, etc- unfortunately this is *not* a 100% fix, and frankly it should not be necessary on a machine with 2019 specs. So until Dell fixes the issue, which seems to have been ongoing for years now with multiple Dell models, my recommendation is to chuck your Dell ASAP and get something else. Taking care of the Pro Audio community is apparently NOT a priority for Dell. Fortunately I was able to return mine.

[Pimpjayy]

The only reason it has crackling sound is because you need the right driver for that daw. If you are trying to record audio with a microphone you need to download the interface driver on your laptop.