Thanks

Regards
Madhura

http://www.staffingpower.com/

According to Creative’s web-site, “no further development” is planned – and the only option is to shell out massive bux for their X-FI series cards.

You’d think that companies like Dell, Creative, et.al. would start putting tubes of Preperation H in the box with their stuff, makes giving us the screws easier. . . .

Grrrr!

What say ye?

Jim

Go to

'Control Panel'
'Sound'
'Recording' tab
Right Click on any blank white area, tick 'show disabled devices' and 'show
disconnected devices'.
Right Click on Microphone and 'Disable'
Right Click on WaveOut Mix and 'Enable'
Still on 'WaveOut Mix' click 'Properties' then the 'Levels' tab.
Set WaveOut Mix to 50% and 'Apply' (If highlighted).

Still got the will to live? Then we will continue……

Open your browser with the 'Freecorder Toolbar'
On the freecorder toolbar click 'Settings'
Tick only the 'Record From Windows Input Device'(do not tick anything else)
The only device showing should be 'WaveOut Mix' which is OK!

Job done! Works for me 100% even using Windows Vista, no matter what type of music!
Tried at least 20 tracks without a glitch!

These settings also allow you to use 'Audacity' software (Freeware) to record live
streaming stuff!

The sound is barely audible even with maximum volume. The headphone jack provides weak sound too. Something is wrong with Dell Sound after looking at all the complaints.

@Donald Dhell
crackling audio is caused by the external Sata deviced (also a little by the 1394 interface), users who had disable it have “solved”
the problem.

@jasondpals
You wrote : “Just another reason to get linux. http://www.ubuntu.com/”
Unfortunately the only audio problem I have both with Dell Precision M4400 and Inspiron 9400 is that there is absolutely no way to record from the output of audio card, I spent more than 20 hours to try to solve the problem but nothing work.

With vista I was able to record with standard MS “sound recorder” the output of the audio card.
So it do not seems that with M4400 Precision there is any audio recording limitation

@ Dell laptops audio cards
IMHO the quality of Dell audio devices is very poor, the SIGMATEL STAC 92X is garbage!
It is a shame that Sigmatel audio is on such nice laptops.
With Dell 9400 I had bought a USB external audio device (10$) for having Dragon Natural speaking software to work with the Sigmatel there was simply no way, the microphone input had not enough quality !

A vast majority of 2008 Dell laptop models are having a problem with crackling audio/mp3 and video playback. The actual reason for this is a bad DPC latency behavior, causing the CPU to halt for milliseconds. On Vista this is so bad that even the mouse is freezing in motion and games suffer from microstutter. Since it’s only milliseconds, the effects are rather subtle and apparently not all are affected but musicians who tried to run recording software (which relies on a good DPC behavior) on those Dells identified the DPC problem as the reason why this is completely impossible. On some models, turning off the WLAN helps the normal non-musician customers but most of them are bent over by Dell again. They give you the same lame workarounds over and over again and noone really cares about the problem.

Lenovo is the next one in the “don’t try to play music on this thing”-line: Some of their new “Thinkpad SL” laptops have just the same unfixable problem with DPC latency and Lenovo is ignoring this just like Dell. Other than Dell, at Lenovo you don’t even have a chance to complain about that at a relevant address, all you get is shrugging shoulders from their outsourced support and there’s no way to return it, get it repaired or even acknowledged.

Most customers are not able to understand the moment of the technical cause for these issues and see this as a neglectable flaw and just ignore it (“meh noo I don’t want to send it in and I dont hear so much music on it and all the hassle…”). They don’t understand that this is not only affecting audio playback but practically all entertainment applications. If you’re putting more emphasis on these applications than the average guy and you’re not satisfied with this, you’re genuinely effed in the a-dot.

I own 2 Dells as present (XPS 410, and Dimension E520) both running Vista Ultimate, both with the same internal audio chipset (Sigmatel HD).. None of the solutions here are capable of enabling “stereo mix” Quite frustrating indeed. Needless to say, this and other decisions will likely steer me away from Dell for future purposes.

The “What U Hear” feature for Sound Blaster Audigy SE/LS/Live!24 bit cards had changed since the latest driver update. The previous version of Windows Vista driver (SB24_VTDRV_LB_1_04_0065A.exe) for Sound Blaster Audigy SE/LS/Live!24 bit has an option for recording with “What U Hear”;

The latest version (SB24_VTDRV_LB_1_04_0077.exe) no longer has the option for “What U Hear” recording with Sound Blaster Audigy SE/LS/Live!24bit.

Both drivers are currently available for download. The only way to get the “What U Hear” back is to reinstall the previous drivers, or roll back drivers.

Actually, you could even pick up a cheaper used G4 Powerbook if you wanted to, and still run the iLife ’08 apps with very little performance difference from running them on a shiny new MacBook or MacBook Pro.

Add in the fact that you can dual or triple boot between Windows, Linux and MacOSX on a MacBook, or even run Parallels and run Mac and Windows at the same time, and the reasons to get a Mac laptop over a PC laptop become more compelling.

Like the other guy, I am not trying to argue the merits of one OS over the other, just that you have a more complete out of the box solution for this kind of content creation with a Mac.

Cheers, great article.

Thanks for the comment. As nice as it sounds, I don’t need “lush” sound. I am running a blog, not editing audio for a feature film. The term “pro” is relative.

In terms of perspective, I do not find it unreasonable to expect a card to perform as it was intended to by the manufacturer.

The card is working now and I am happy with it. It may not be on par with that of an external card, but that was not the nature of my complaint in the first place.

Chad-

I’m surprised you’re not also complaining, for instance, about the quality of the DACs, or about the lack of lush bass on the built-in speakers, etc… There are reasonable expectations, and then there are unreasonable ones. Try to keep things in perspective.

If you’re doing any kind of professional audio production on a laptop, you’ll want an external soundcard. Any pro or hobbyist grade outboard interface will offer you a feature to record what other applications play.

“My company bought a bunch of Dell optiplex desktops with realtek HD integrated sound a year ago and they’ve all got the stereo mix disabled. I did some searching on google for a solution and found what you need to do.

1. Download the SoundMax driver from Dell’s website and extract it somewhere. Then open up ADIHDAUD.INF located in SMAXWDM folder in the driver folder.
2. Find the line HKR,AD1984\\Disable, OutR, 1, 01 ;; Disable Stereo Mix Capture Node
3. Change the “01″ to 00 and save it
4. Run “setup” and select “uninstall” existing driver – reboot
5. Run “setup” and select “install” new driver – ignore the Windows XP auto install setting and ignore the “non certified” driver warning – reboot
6. Go to start menu > run > type: “regedit” [enter] (without quotes)
7. Click on “edit > search” and look for AD1984.
8. For each registry key/folder of AD1984, find the subfolder/key that says MicBP and OutR and change their associated binary values from 01 to 00. For some people, re-installing the driver in this fashion already produces a 00 while for others, the change must be made manually.
9. Reboot

That should allow you to use Stereo Mix like normal.”