e6500 crackling audio

Yes, the settings are the same and the IRRT was set by default as well on E6500.

It seems that IRRT is useless for me.

Strange, changing from IRRT to AHCI caused BSODs on my E6500.

Anyway I will leave the AHCI option since it does help with sound problems I am having

 

i can verify that the installation of the intel matrix manager software (which also installs the drivers) solved the audio issue, but the cracking on startup persists. I have two of these computers right now (one is pending return to dell), both with identical setups, and was noticing that one had no issues with sound (other than the startup) and the other horrid, and then I remembered I hadn't installed the matrix manager. Problem solved.

I should note something unrelated (or maybe not) -- one of my systems shipped with the GPU clocked twice as fast as the other. Thankfully, it is the slow clock that is about to be sent back. Everyone should check it though that has the discrete card and see.

core : 580 MHz
shader : 1450 MHz
memory : 702 MHz (1404 MHz data rate)

 

I suspect the slight crackle during startup is the audio driver / hardware getting configured.

Do you get any noise when you resume from hibernation?

John

 

Here is what I read over in the Dell forums to fix the crackling audio:
It actually worked for me.

Disable the "A" band on the wireless networking adapter (assuming you aren't using A band for your connection)

Go to the adapter properties/advanced tab and there is a selection for disabled bands - select to disable the A band.

This actually worked for me.. now my audio is perfect on my E6500.

 

Here is the link to the Dell forum topic that I'm refering to in the above post:

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=cc_faq&thread.id=364

 

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I have been in contact with Dell executive customer care, latitude engineering dept, product testers, managers, and basically everyone who can fix these stupid little issues we are having with the E6500.

I have 2 issues with this model. The first is the same old audio crackling that everyone seems to be having. A fix was just posted for that, though I am not sure if that fixes it. My other, more important issue is with the keyboard. Randomly, the CTRL button activates while typing (not physically, just the function of the button) This will cause all sorts of dialog boxes to pop up while I am typing, select all the text im typing, delete entire words instead of characters, and close windows.

I have worked my way basically up to the top of the food chain at Dell with this one, and I have a conference call scheduled with them tomorrow afternoon to figure out what the heck is going on. I dont know if this keyboard issue is wide spread, but I have had it on 2 machines they have sent me.

What a disappointment this machine has been.

 

Are you 100% sure it is not the touchpad which is causing that problem? I'm sure i had a few problems like that early on but moved the touch sensitivity towards lighter touch and the TouchCheck function nearer to maximum. Palms getting too close to touchpads during typing can have unwanted effects.

John

 

100% sure that it is not the touchpad. Even when I am not touching the pad, and click click any keyboard button, the issue somestimes happens.

 

The first thing I did when I got this laptop was wipe it and install Vista x64 SP1 (I have 4 gB of memory). Even after the Intel Matrix drivers and BIOS upgrade to A06, I still have the occasional skip/chop in audio. My CPU load isn't even that high, I'm just playing video/audio. There's no excuse with this hardware to have audio problems. Hell, the video plays smooth enough, why does the audio skip? There's no excuse for such poor driver support for these devices. This is the only thing holding me back from enjoying this purchase 100%.

I have IRRT default too, but when I switch to AHCI, I BSOD while loading Windows. Does changing to AHCI really help with the crackling problem, and if so, how can I change it without BSOD?

The crackling has gone down much after Intel installation and upgrade to A06 BIOS, but it's not completely gone. It's occasional, but consistent. Does anyone know if Dell is going to address this? I don't mean to be picky or anything, but if I paid this amount of money for this nice piece of hardware, is it so much to ask that the sound doesn't crackle every now and then?

 

It did not make crackling problem go away completely. However it was a little bit better than with the IRRT. And I had to reinstall Windows after changing to AHCI.