XPS 15Z Audio issue

Given that that driver doesn't even support the HM67 chipset of the XPS 15z I highly doubt that is going to fix any problems here.

This is unrelated to the topic, but you fellow 15z owners might find this interesting.  

I updated the Intel HD 3000 driver to the latest version (A098.15.10.2455) on the Dell website, and my Windows Experience Score for Graphics jumped from 4.3 to 5.5.  Pretty significant!

Link here: www.dell.com/.../DriverFileFormats

Hey everyone! I just got off the phone with tech support regarding the crackling/stuttering sound issue. the girl gave me s suggestion that appears to have worked so far:

1) Go to your Taskbar and right click on the sound icon --> select playback devices.

2) click on Speakers --> click properties

3) now you will see 4 tabs at the top of the new window (general, levels,enhancements, advanced). Click on Enhancements.

4) now tick/enable the box "Disable all sound effects".

5) click Ok. now hopefully the sound issue has been resolved! Good Luck everyone

PS: I even re-enabled the Atheros Ethernet driver after performing this fix, and it appears to be fixed :) Will continue to monitor my sound to make sure this has worked.

Right. I've been through that process and it doesn't work for my problem. Also note that you've turned off a feature of your machine so not really a fix.

If I turn my laptop off, it doesn't have the problem.

If I don't use Wifi, it doesn't have the problem.

If they replace the Wifi card with a lesser Wifi card, it doesn't have the problem.

McAfee is long long gone on my machine. I hate it and it was probably the very first thing to be removed (I just replaced with MSE)

Dell has one week to fix this problem for me or I quit on them.  I've already had the wireless card and screen replaced.  My machine is two weeks old.  I use it to present to 100s of people each week.  Yesterday I tried to watch a 15 min video with about 30 people that was almost unbearable due to the crackling.  My machine is going back on Friday and I will no longer use dell,  which is sort of sad.  I really want this thing to work.  Lots of potential.  But this is ridiculous.

Any fixes yet?  I'm sure we can't be the only ones experiencing this.  I don't know how Dell can release these machines with such serious issues.

At the end of last week I had reason to use the wired ethernet port on my 15z. This wa sthe first time I've used the wired NIC since disabling it to avoid the audio stuttering issue.

When I booted the machine over the weekend (having forgotten that I'd been using the wired ethernet) the stuttering audio was back - the Windows 7 boot sound was stuttering.. so this is before the machine is doing anything difficult.

I simply disabled the wired NIC again and the stuttering audio has gone again.

Once again this is more confirmation that the WIRED network adapter is at least involved, if not the cause of the problem.

When are Dell going to take this seriously?

I am tempted to try to find some time over the next coupel of weeks to video the process of playing music, enabling the adapter, hearing the stuttering start, disabling the adapter, hearing the stuttering stop. It's that simple to reproduce.

I've just spotted another bunch of threads on these forums where people are reporting the same problems. A number of them have reported the issue direct to Dell CS and endd up with replaced motherboards or wireless cards etc whi do not fix the fault. There is a good chance that these people are ending up with refurbished hardware in their brand new laptops.

This is not on, and I for one am getting very frustrated at having spent so much money on a machine that DOES NOT WORK PROPERLY!

I love everything else about the machine, but this is a fault that Dell must address - it's not fot for purpose as it is.

-FM

Got a link? Using my service tag I only see this:

Realtek-Driver R306067.exe (107MB) Recommended 6/21/2011 6.0.1.6383, A03 Applies to: ALC269 HD Audio

Link: http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/DriverDetails/DriverFileFormats?DriverId=0T0GT&FileId=2731103525

Anyone try the new drivers from realtek yet?  I just checked and saw that they posted new drivers on the 16th of Dec.

No thats not the problem cause 2 weeks after they came out to my place the sound problem came right back...

If the problem only happened after a tech visit I would look directly at whatever was changed during that visit.

So I went a week with no problems.  Now the crackling has increased.  I still haven't installed the realtek downloads- I don't know enough about this stuff.  It's driving me nuts though.  Here's the realtek link:  www.realtek.com/.../downloadsView.aspx

I don't know if those will mess up my audio worse than it is now.  One thing I did notice is that when I burned a cd on Christmas morning to play at my church, the crackling transferred to the cd.  This is so ridiculous.  Anyone make any progress yet?

Installed new driver for intel rapid storage.  No improvement.

This will be the last time I post.  It seems like I'm the only one here anymore.  Here's what I did today.  I noticed throughout this week with all the crackling that my intel my wifi said it didn't have an adapter.  I tried to get it going but didn't worry about sinced I still had a wifi signal.  I didn't think much of it.  

But today I noticed that Dell provided an updated driver for intel networking so I installed.  I still got crackling.  Bad.  So I went to a dif room. Unplugged all my cords.  Still getting crackling sporadically.  So, I went to intel my wifi and enabled my wifi technology.  I got some crackling while I was fooling around in there, but when I got it enabled- no crackling.  I listened to music for a few miinutes went back and fooled with the my wifi- instant crackling.  Left it disabled- crackling.  Turned it back on and fired up hd movies in itunes and wmp.  Ran them both simultaneously and also ran a video in youtube along with them.  Used a pretty big chunk of the cpu- wanted to see if high cpu useage would affect it as others had suggested.  Had audio going through all of them with no crackles.  I think this is an intel wifi issue.

I've already had my wifi card and antennae replaced by dell.  Hopefully keeping the my wifi enabled will take care of this for me...