Dell promises to release a solution to address DPC latency issues imminently
The search for a resolution to the DPC latency issues that have affected some XPS 15 9570 laptops and other XPS machines marches on, but that could be drawing to a close, according to Dell. Frank Azor tweeted the following a few days ago:
Tons of progress on DPC latency issue(s)...solutions are coming very soon.
Nelson Mak, an engineering technologist at the company, has also tweeted that Dell "has made some big steps towards tackling the problem". The DPC issues have been found to cause audio glitching during Ableton sessions. However, Mak pointed out that the Realtek audio drivers, which were believed to potentially be a source of the problem, are "actually a package of multiple components rather than one single driver."
It seems as though that resolving the DPC issues will take more than addressing a rogue component within the driver stack. Dell recently released an updated Realtek audio driver that should rectify audio issues where audio playback is using the standard Windows Audio Processing Object (APO), but it may not fix any Digital Signal Processing (DSP) offload-related audio issues. You can find the updated Realtek audio driver here.
Mak has elaborated that there are probably two causes of the DPC issues. Firstly, misbehaving software is trigging high priority DPCs, while another driver may be causing a high number of DPC generation. Moreover, Mak has pointed out that:
...distortion problems are separate from audio pops/crackles which are in turn separate from audio glitch/stutters.
We shall keep you updated with any further news or changes. Please let us know if the new audio driver has resolved any of the audio glitches that have been affecting your XPS 15 9570.
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