whatever the case, i've definitely experienced the audio problem on my University's network. i'll give it some testing when i'm back there, since those conditions should be sufficient for testing.

I'm using an Asus RT-N56U

www.asus.com/.../RTN56U

I'm quite pleased with it actually. I can't put DD-WRT on it because of the Ralink chipset, but I only really need it as an access point. I have a separate firewall/router.

Again though you are talking about your wireless performance being affected by the wired device. Our problem is that the audio is corrupted by operation of the wireless device. Is your audio corrupted?

i experience the same audio issues when there's a large amount of throughput on the wireless card, which is the matter of this thread, if i'm reading correctly. i can't really test this at home because my internet isn't too fast, only 3Mpbs, but it's easy enough for me to test on my school's, since University speeds are typically around 100Mpbs, and it's very easy to replicate when i'm watching a Youtube video and the video is playing, but while the rest of the video is loading, the audio issue occurs. like i said i'll give it a try next time i'm on campus.

I'm not relying on the internet for testing though.

I just copy files to/from my NAS on my home LAN. I won't ever get 10MByte/sec speeds from my home internet.

My guess would be you'll find the audio issue will be much more apparent over your University network, but the test in the original thread is nothing to do with Internet speed. Its all about my LAN, I've updated the thread and made some modifications as well posting all the variables in the test (Sorry I should of before).

All sorts of talk last night.  That's great.  What about the hard drive?  I had no problems on this system until dell put in a new hard drive last week.  As soon as I got up and going and ran music the crackle was there.  I started going through drivers and that's when I came across atheros.  It wouldn't take the updated driver correctly.  Tried different methods but it wouldn't take.  That's why I ended up trying the disable.  

It seems like somewhere a piece of software is telling the processor to forget about the audio signal in order to favor data storage to the hard drive.  In otherwords instead of processing data to the hard drive and playing audio at the same time something is telling the computer to drop the audio priority.  It's a priority issue with the audio.  The processor puts it on the back burner which makes it suck.  

So hardware issues for me began with new hard drive, but of course there's a multitude of software issues with that.    

Has anyone tried disconnecting from the internet, playing some music, starting the dpc latency graph, and blasting a 3 or 4 gb transfer from usb to the hard drive?  If the latency spikes and music goes to crap, then that might rule out 6230 and lead to hard drive or motherboard?  What about hard drive firmware?

I can't comment on the hard drive scenario as I've had this problem since day one regardless so my view is its not the hard drive. I would like to perform some more tests in the future with different scenarios but the time element is against me, perhaps you guys could make a video or two and we can share results?

I don't want to make this off topic, but absolutely DO NOT install any newer hard drive firmware for the Dell XPS 15z, the 003DEM1 firmware update from Dell is borked and causes massive amounts of Bad sectors after installing. I did it and since my 750 GB Seagate drive inside is now saying its bad, SMART tests tell me there are a ridicilous amounts of sectors waiting to be re-mapped.

See this thread: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/19438569/20066753.aspx

The update should be removed from the Drivers and Downloads section, however usually you can find it on their FTP site or elsewhere.

Bottom line, don't do it.

yow, thanks for the heads up James2k

I am currently uploading a video outlining my horriffic DPC latency crackle/spike issue. check it out here:

Please note this might take an hour to upload fully as my upload speed is slow.

I am using Windows 7 and I have the stuttering audio issue as well. I do not use a wireless ethernet card but Internet activity does have an effect. I get the feeling this is a Windows issue.

My DCP Latency

http://i41.tinypic.com/k9z400.png

I'm quite tired of trying to figure out the exact cause of this (all over the net, reassigning IRQ in BIOS). It is either a driver for network adapters, Microsoft's wonderful default drivers, or a problem with Win7 architecture.

My Windows XP install does not, and never did, have this issue. Is there any way to put pressure on Microsoft to make an actual fix for SP2? Or just plain make a fix?

Hi richsark,

Thanks for you reply.

I installed the driver from the link provided and this does indeed seem to make a difference!

I repeated the same test outlined in the original thread and found that there are still latency spikes, however I did not get ANY crackling regarding audio, which is really awesome!

I'm going to continue testing this more to confirm its not a fluke, however this does look like a viable fix.

Maybe if a couple more people could test this out and see what results you get would be really helpful.

Note for anyone wanting to do this: The driver download link provided installed a program called "Media Get" to obtain the driver download, it made me wary at first but it seems to be safe, I immediately uninstalled the program after the download finished though.

Disregard that, you can download the zip archive directly without going through the Media Get software or use the Dropbox link below:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/73541048/Dell%20XPS%2015z/www.x-drivers.ru_atheros_ar813x_ar815x_v2.0.14.15.zip

Looks like richsark may have just struck gold here!

Hi James2k, That's great news it's starting to work for you and perhaps everyone.

I have been annoyed with this since last May when I got my xps 15z

Also, I did not have to download "Media Get" like you said. I just downloaded the zip file per my directions.

If this in fact is a call for a celebration, perhaps someone can post the zip on Dropbox or something so folks don't get worried.

Thanks

Richsark

Hi richsark,

Ah yes I see that now, my mistake. I obviously didn't read your downloading instructions fully.

I'm sure a few people will be wanting to try this ASAP, as like you, we've been wanting a fix for this issue for months.

I can confirm the zip archive is completely safe, virus scanned and signed drivers, though as requested, here it is on Dropbox for anyone a bit wary of the original site:

dl.dropbox.com/.../www.x-drivers.ru_atheros_ar813x_ar815x_v2.0.14.15.zip

Again, thank you richsark, lets hope this fix works for others.

Great work James2k.

Let's see if we can finally close this thread out.

Perhaps dell engineering can Intergrate this on there drivers page.

Thanks,

Richsark