Check your headphones jacks?

Alright, I got a system exchange for my inspiron 1520 that had clicking/popping noises anytime audio was played, and my new m1530 has the exact same issue. (What I hear is a clicking/popping right before audio is played, and right after it stops for all my audio players. This also happens when it is paused.) I am wondering if this is just bad luck or if this is some mass hardware issue. So I pose the question, do you guys get clicking/popping on your 1520/1530's?

How to reproduce clicking/popping:
1) Plug in headphones
2)Turn volume down to less than 15% of the max volume (any higher and you risk ear damage)
3) Close media players, etc (not just pause, close them).
4) To try to standardize the tests, try running sounds directly from windows:
Right click the speaker icon in your tray, hit sounds. Select one of the sounds and try using the test button. The most noticeable clicking/popping are at the bottom under "windows speech recognition" as the pop at the end is about 1/2 second delayed on some of them. Device connect, device disconnect, and the logon/logoff sounds are also very noticeable.

What is odd for me is that each sound has different clicks/pops, and that they are consistent for each one. I also don't think its my headphones either, as I have three pairs (One Sennheiser, one creative, one sony) and they each produce the same clicking/popping pattern for each sound.

 

my m1530 does the same and its really really really annoying. Its down to the driver for the sound card/codec. When I re-installed vista the click only re-appeared after the driver was re-installed (the standard MS driver doesn't suffer this issue)
A solution is to remove the driver but you lose some functionality - 2nd headphone jack doesn't work for example. To be honest, I prefer the sound from the MS driver, it has a slightly warmer sound and it doesn't click. I'm using Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5 Pro's.

If I could find a decent ExpressCard sound card I would use one in place of the internal card.

 

That's interesting, so I'm not crazy. Anyone else have this issue?

Wow, Dell paired horrible speakers with an audio jack that clicks/pops on their premium gaming notebooks. Audiophiles beware.

 

Actually if you read around here and look for the "stereo mix" thread thingy there is a driver there that enables stereo mix. It ALSO fixes that problem too although you lose a headphone jack. I hope there is a FULL review of the new XPS because I never heard any of these problems until i dug deeper and looked around. Stereo mix being gone is retarded.

 

Thanks for the suggestion.

I wasn't looking to enable stereo mix, and when I tried to do that with my 1520, the audio would stutter badly after coming out of sleep mode. I will give it a shot and see how it fares with this notebook.

 

I've got it once or twice on my 1520. I can only hear it while on headphones - on speakers I dont seem to hear it.

 

I found a workaround:

If you play something on VLC media player and pause it, then audio will play normally as long as VLC remains paused. You can minimize the player if you want.

 

I think the headphone port issue actually varies significantly by headphones. I used to notice a bit of the "headphone port noise" with my old, cheap headphones, but it's gone away entirely since I upgraded to midrange Sennheiser headphones.

I've never noticed this particular issue, however, and did just test it as you noted. I've run both Vista and XP on this laptop (XP currently), so I would guess that means it doesn't happen on all 1520/1530's.

 

No, it only does this with vista. I comfirmed this with my old notebook.

 

yes identical problem. lets BUST THIS BUG! arrrr!

 

Hissing usually indicates a signal-to-noise issue. So long as the hardware is capable of maintaining 90 decibals or greater, your ears will hear nothing. When you put a higher quality speaker or headphone set on the lappy, while typically the hiss will still be present, but usually dimished to the point of no longer being an issue. This is because speakers typically are not as 'clean' as the source is. They introduce distortion.

Anyway, the clicking / popping is an issue on a lot of different Dell Laptops. What I have noticed is that it occurs mostly when my wireless card is on. I can manually shut mine off and do, and usually that takes care of the issue. That and a recent driver update brought my cracking to about 90% tolerable. This is mainly a driver issue I believe, and also probably an under-shielded / poorly designed motherboard. One thing you can do is experiment disabling your wi-fi. Later on, you may want try enabling ONLY the G band on your wireless router, as I have heard that disabling a or b on your card or router can help.

 

Didn't someone already fix this problem by opening up the computer and wrapping the jack in electrical tape? Apparently the jack was picking up interference from other components in the laptop, causing cpu noise, crackling, etc.

 

Lap,
Can you please clarify the possible electrical tape fix? Im desperate and will try anything.

 

Here is the original link to the thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=197809

I think this was only to fix a whine noise through the headphone jack, not really crackling. Use at your own risk.
The pictures in the above link have been removed, but you can read the guide here:
http://pctipguys.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=56&Itemid=36&limit=1&limitstart=0

Good luck with this.

 

Hmmm, good links. I found the service manual for the XPSm1530.. here
But my headphones dont whine, if the wireless switch is off, my headphones sound great. And the skipping and cracking comes from the speakers as well as the headphones. I wonder if taping up the wireless board would be even worth the try.

 

i dont hav this problem in the slightest. Im using the A08 bios and whatever audio driver came on it. Has anybody checked to see if they have disabled any startup items related to audio and then try setting them back to open at start up? Just an idea of course.

 

Well its good to see this topic is still up and running in my absence.

I have tried switching off my wireless card but the noise is still there. I haven't tried switching off certain bands, so I'll try that next as well as the latest driver update. I also tried checking the device manager to see if I could stop the computer from switching it off to conserve power and that didn't work either (option wasn't there.) I get some hissing, but that doesn't really bother me as much as random popping.
I really wish it could be fixed, but at the very least there is the quickfix I found to remove the noise (pause VLC media player and leave it in the background)

 

i think i have this too... any clue how to fix all this?

 

I am having the SAME problem.

Happens when wifi is ON or OFF

Happens through headphones and speakers

Dell has tried to do tons of driver work and disableing on my computer...nothing has worked.

ANYONE have any idea???? ive seeen countless posts about this, has no one found a solution?

 

No solution as of yet. The issue is likely a hardware issue with newer motherboards, as I have tested for and experience the crackling/popping using Dell's diagnostics utility off a boot disc.

I just checked Dell's website, and they appear to have some new audio drivers that were released on 10/21/2008. Try that. I'll report my results when I get home today.

 

For what it's worth, a couple of Latitudes from several years back had really bad hissing/crackling. Really bad IMO for ANY laptop :-/