Darwin Mach

So, my laptop is a Dell Precision M6400. For a while now, I’ve been experiencing some weird issues with the sound card (IDT HD Audio)

Some examples:
- Random audio hiccups
- Every time I open Adobe Soundbooth, open a file in soundbooth, or change my microphone settings, I get a brief, but loud piano slamming noise. Also any music or sounds I was playing in the background kept switching between stereo and mono output

Seems like the issue was that the default formats for the speakers and the microphone didn’t match up. In Windows 7 (and Vista), there’s an “Advanced” tab when you open up the sound properties and double click a device. This allows you to set the default format. Make sure the microphone inputs (particularly the “Microphone Array”) and the “Speakers / Headphones” have matching formats.

For the audio hiccups fix, you need to disable the power management option in the IDT’s control panel applet. (Preferences “tab”)

Also as a note about an earlier issue: Sound won’t play back through the built in speakers…
- You need to disable the “Independent (R.T.C.) Headphones” device or the sound driver will get confused.
- You also need to make sure the “Speakers / Headphones” device, “Custom” tab has the “PC Spk Mute” unchecked. What this option really means is to mute the built-in speakers, not to get rid of the annoying PC beep that occurs once in a blue moon. Redundant of course since plugging in external speakers or headphones already accomplishes this.

Now that the sound card works like it should, audio entertainment has been much more enjoyable

Driver Version as of writing: 6.10.0.6229 (Dell A12, they’re from the M6500 download page)
Default Format I’m using: “24 bit, 48000 Hz (Studio Quality)”

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Just bought Hans Zimmer’s album “The Holiday” after listening to the first song in the album, “Maestro”.

Wonderful piece, and well done. You can hear for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCEEeiGrAic

You can purchase the song ($0.99) or album ($9.99) here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002C77VP6/ref=sr_1_album_1_rd?ie=UTF8&child=B002C7ECHQ&qid=1261898438&sr=1-1

Enjoy!

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I recently discovered a huge performance decrease in download speeds and eventually narrowed it down to the way my wireless routers have been configured.

As a note: my wireless routers are not used as routers but as access points and bridges.

Basically, you have to leave WMM support enabled in order for most 802.11n wireless cards to connect to an access point supporting 802.11n. But in my scenario, a wireless router configured as a bridge was the client. WMM is an extension of 802.11e, which is Quality of Service (QoS) for wireless protocols. The N-wireless standard requires that this is supported.

The important thing I discovered was that the bridge client needs to have WMM support disabled or download speeds will be less than 1 Mbps (as measured by http://speedtest.net) while upload speeds were normal for my ISP (Comcast Cable). I’m not exactly sure why, but it makes sense that the wireless client should not be setting WMM priorities over top of the access point’s priorities. It just confuses the communications since “upload” from the AP means “download” for the client and vice versa.

So yes, if you have wireless bridges & APs, especially those running custom firmware, be aware of these settings.

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