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.

[RGBR]

I've contacted Dell premium support and they answered me today. My problem is high latency when recording audio in DAW. The answer was: "Thank you for sending your e-mail to Dell Technical Support. I understand there is a problem with the sound. This problem was escalated and will be investigated. Currently there is no solution but an BIOS update is expected to solve the problem. At this moment there is no release date available.(...) Sorry for the inconvenience. Kind regards," So...we have to wait...

[abragagn]

That's only the standard reply. If you look at any thread looking for audio support they quote that "we are working on it, wait for a bios update".

It's unacceptable that a premium laptop that costs two months of my salary has these type of problems and zero support. I use my Dell for work, I lost hours of my life to fix this pc. You are losing clients Dell.

[Ztronical]

Try Process Lasso

By Bitsum

You can use the demo for a few days and it does some good just running without any changes.

It is basically a customizable Task manager.

I ended up buying it because of the features I used to fix my dpc latency spikes.

I was able to add default actions to the priority, affinity, and cores.

Running Ableton and Traktor applications and associated processes on the cores that had the least spikes. According to Latencymon. And setting the culprit spiking Process to the stay on the 2 cores.

Also set Traktor and Ableton audio applications to high priority.

System is running better than ever.

Www.bitsum.com

[RGBR]

Thank you all for the answers.

Ztronical, thanks for indicating the Process Lasso software. I will try that. Do you have no problem working with audio now using Process Lasso ?

It is really bad that Dell after several months does not have a better answer or ANY support solution.... 

[Ztronical]

It's been 2 weeks and my audio applications are spike free.

Mainly the external soundcards for Ableton and Traktor.

I have been chasing dpc latency for 8 years and this is the closest to perfect I have seen.

In Task manager you can set cpu affinity and priority for running programs and services but not permanently. With this you can.

I am not sure if what I did is recommended, setting my audio applications to only run on cores that had the least spikes, but it works.

I used Latencymon to find the problem cores and highest dpc.

When you click on running services/applications Process Lasso gives a bunch of settings and the ability to set defaults.

I also noticed it does other optimization just running. The Dpc Latency is not spiking as much or as high as soon as Process Lasso is started. If you read through the info there is a lot it does to correct Windows issues.

The price is mainly the ability to set defaults permanently. 

[ashtk]

---

@Jerry37 wrote:

I may have found a workaround for this issue.

1. Run Windows Performance Tools to determine which of your CPU cores is affected by DPC issues. In my case, ACPI.sys is causing Core 0 to have DPC interrupts of 1700 microseconds or longer.

---

Could you please be a little be more specific on the steps to follow ? Do you mean Microsoft Performance Toolkit ? That would be really nice as I have the same problem ! Thanks so much in advance

[Ztronical]

More than likely it is a suggestion to disable whatever audio service or application from running on the core that is causing the latency.

To find what is causing the spikes (dpc latency), use Latencymon then look at what core is causing it. There are a few tabs, i believe it is the last one.

To disable the application and services effected from running on the core or cores you can do that in Task Manager if the application or services are running (right click and set affinity) but... you have to do it every time you open the application, it won't keep it as a default setting.

That is why I suggested the application Process Lasso in the post above. With the paid version you can set defaults and it does other optimization to fix this and other Windows settings.

[ashtk]

Oh, I actually have latencymom but hadn't though to check the other tabs... : )

Thanks a lot !

[kodaro]

All - I too have this issue...and it is amazingly frustrating. I am completely plagued by this issue to the point where I was reviewing and almost bought a Macbook Pro (still may).   

I recently "upgraded" to a Dell Precision 7520 laptop running Windows 10 Pro (version 1709) and Ableton 9 and 10 Suite. I am having insane issues with CPU loads when compared to my previous PC (a 5 year old Dell Precision M4600 Laptop with a 256 GB SSD drive, 16 GB RAM, and a i7 Quad Core Extreme 2920XM processor, NVIDIA Quaddro 2000M (2GB Dedicated RAM), Windows 7 64 bit). 

The specs of the new system are Dell Precision 7520, Intel Xeon e3-1575M v6@3.1 GHz with 64GB RAM (it also has dedicated NVIDIA graphics card and SSD drives). I am using a Lynx Hilo via Thunderbolt as my interface. The main SSD drive (1TB) has the software and a secondary SSD (500GB) has sample libraries and file storage.  With such a high end (and EXPENSIVE!) professional system you would think this would be a non issue...essentially it makes it unusable.

I have tried the suggested testing (LatencyMon - I have ACPI.sys on Cores 0-2 with DPC execution at 1.4-1.6 ms) and have downloaded the Process Lasso software.  I can see how switching the CPU affinity for my audio software could help but it doesn't resolve the issue for me (unfortunately at all).  

Anyone else have luck on this one or found anything else to help?

Thanks. 

REK

[Jhnlennon]

Any update to this issue? I am running into the same issue with a 7588 G7. Tried everything short of the software mentioned here. Shouldn't need aftermarket software to get acceptable audio performance from a higher end laptop. My MSI Apache runs much more reliably and it's 3 years older. What gives???