Audio on Latitude E6500

Choppy/Skipping Audio Workarounds

Particularly try turning off the wireless and make sure power settings are set for maximum performance.

Yes, I've tried both of those things.  I've looked through the forum you referenced and did just about everything in there also.  Nothing seemed to have worked.  could it just be the sound card is bad?  I really don't have anything weird set up on my system.  Are there other folks who have this machine/soundcard, and Windows Vista where this is working fine?

Hello Brece, you are not the only one with this problem. On differente forums this problem is described. I have contacted Dell several times for this problem but it seems they cannot solve it. I have tried, tried and tried almost everything but the problem still occurs. Because the audio is for me essential this is not acceptable. I am using an external audio interface for my music/audio but the audio still cracks. I have contacted Dell yesterday to return the laptop.

I let you know the answer from Dell.

I switched over to the native Vista driver and, although the sound quality is still "tinny", it doesn't cut out or crackle.  To switch over to the native Vista audio driver, I uninstalled the Dell audio driver, then went into both the Dell directory and the audio directory and deleted the audio drivers.  I then restarted the e6500 and windows vista automatically downloaded and installed the native vista driver.  I'm running Vista Ultimate (32-bit).

Laptops are never brillant for audio.  Go purchase some speakers and hook them up for at home use.  I have 5.1 Surround Sound for my Inspiron 1525 and a $10 pair of speakers from walmart on my other system.  Even the walmart speakers for ten bucks works great and sound twenty times better than a laptops speakers.

Even the walmart speakers for ten bucks works great and sound twenty times better than a laptops speakers.

Better still if you hook the speakers up to a dedicated Pygmy (PCMCIA) or ExpressCard soundcard :emotion-55:

Even if it's enhanced - i.e. using Creative's Soundblaster Advanced MB, on-board audio will never provide anything like the audio experience of a desktop system.

The only way to get anywhere near the audio reproduction of a desktop system, is to bypass the on-board audio solutions altogether.

I personally use a Creative ExpressCard SoundBlaster X-Fi Notebook, and a set of Creative GigaWorks T40's for the job.

If I'm gaming late into the night, I connect a set of Sennheiser PXC300 (foldable) headphones in place of the speakers.

The difference from using the on-board audio/speakers is night and day :emotion-11:

A set of speakers like the T40's are not ideal if you use your laptop on the road of course, but there are plenty of more portable speakers available :emotion-5:

I went back to the site and reinstalled the newest driver, even though I thought I had the latest version apparently I did not. Seems to be working better now.