Studio 1737 DPC Latency

Still no public beta test to make sure it's fixing issues with audio applications?

I would also like to beta test the new bios. I can put it though the paces of streaming audio!

Bill,

Do you know if there will be a new 1735 BIOS at the same time?

James

I get a good 3500us spike about every 30 seconds and then it calms down to 1500 every 5 seconds and then a consistant spikes around 500us every 10 seconds.  Currently using 64-bit Vista on 1737 with LAN...Wireless (Dell 1397 WLAN) is disabled. I also updated the LAN and Video card drivers with the latest from dell.  Either way its getting alittle better!

Currently, I'm seeing a random red spike every so often, the odd yellow spike as well. The eject button is still causing a huge spike when pressed, so that's definitely not fixed yet. However, there is alot more green on the graph with revision A08.

I'm just testing with everything enabled right now and normal behaviour. I will test with Traktor Scratch Pro when I get home from work without disabling the acpi.sys thread and see how it performs.

I assume I wiil hear an audio glitch when the red spikes occur, but I will have to test and see.  I'm testing on WinXP SP3 still.

What's better in A08 is you can still suspend the acpi.sys thread to clear everything up opposed to the A07 version which removed the ability to disable the acpi.sys thread to stop the DPC spikes from happening.

Just loaded the A08 and seem to be having the same issues as the previous replies. The spikes have gotten further apart in frequency but more vicious. When it does spike it hits in the red about 2500-3000 us when before it was just yellow spikes with an occasional red but evenly spread about 5 us apart .

I have been following this post for a while. I have a Studio 1737, 4 G's of ram, P8400 2.40 Ghz  Core 2. I have been dual booting using a clean install of Windows 7 for the recording drive with the system optimized for audio (disabling network card, disable wifi, etc) . I have been running Record for Reason with a Presounus firebox audio interface. I have been having the same issues as most of the other posts. Can't even play the demo songs without dropouts.

I am glad to see Dell taking the time to work on this issue. I bought this Laptop based on the specs never suspecting the BIOS would be an issue. Getting closer but still needs work.

Have just read the BIOS update instructions... and it talks about the floppy method... Who the hell has a floppy drive lying around these days???

So wondering how have people flashed their BIOS with this exe... will it work from the hard drive???

Not happy to read that it doesn't fix the problem anyway...

You don't need a floppy drive, you can just download the file and run it from Windows.

Cheers DJ Quartz, thanx for the answer.

I will load the latest BIOS tonight when I get home from work and post the results..

Still interested to find if anyone has tried an ExpressCard soundcard in the 1737???

Well done Dell team! esp Bill on releasing the A08 for 1737, guys please dont forget us in the 1735 world!!! please! we have not had a bios update since may 2008 (A05).

Is there a current project for an A06 on the 1735?

p.s. how is the new position at Dell, BILL?

I was so pumped to find out the new BIOS was released, but it doesn't look to have fixed the problem. =(

I should have time this week to test out the update.  Will report back...

I see red, I see red, I see red...

No this isn't a split enz song, it's my latency checker...

To be honest the latency spikes seem to be worse than before, and it doesn't seem much better with the wifi off...

With A07 I would get fairly regular 5 second spikes just below 500µs and just the odd spike up in the red. With the latest BIOS the spikes mostly have 10-15 second intervals BUT NOW the spikes are up around the 4000µs and the sound is still poor with crackles and pops.

I must say I am very disappointed with this machine and with DELL. If the fix-it team have now adopted the use of the latency checker then why the heck cant they see the spikes???? Maybe they are just split enz fans, I don't know....

I've been doing some more testing without my audio software to see what the latency checker has been reporting.

One of the symptoms I seen from restoring the machine from suspend mode is I had constant yellow bars.After a few minutes it cleared up. The graph showed green consistenly with random red spikes.

I'm upgrading various drivers to see if I can track down what is causing the random red spikes without any devices connected or audio software running.

Further testing shows that doing something as simple as connecting an ethernet cable and disconnectiong it causes huge spikes as well when the acpi.sys thread is running.

These are my findings...

- Extremely high spikes when using the dvd drive eject touch button
- Spikes when connecting/disconnecting an ethernet cable
- Spikes when enabling/disabling onboard nic via the network connections panel even with or without the acpi.sys thread disabled
- Spikes when enabling/disabling the wireless adapter via hardware switch or via network connections panel with or without the acpi.sys thread running.
- Bluetooth adapter does not cause spikes when enabled or disabled via the network connections panel with acpi.sys thread running which is good.
- The other touch button controls do not cause spikes (Volume up/down, Mute, Back, Stop, Play/Pause, Forward, Media application button)

Audio Applications tested with:

Native Instruments Traktor Scratch Pro + Audio 8 DJ
Serato Itch + Numark NS7 Controller
Adobe Audition 3.01
Windows Media Player 11

A point I wanted to add is with audio applications such as Traktor or Itch, the latency issue causes these applications to pause which renders them usuable unless  you disable the acpi.sys thread.

Unfortunately, the A08 bios revision doesn't fix it.