T420 Audio Stuttering Issue

[thewezel]

I have noticed that my beloved T420 with Windows 10 has been having issues with audio stuttering. I have tried just about every solution on the internet and I CANNOT manage to fix it. It is a connexant audio chip if that's worth anything, and the issue has been happening since Windows 10 version 1809 as far as I can tell. I have ruled out hardware faults as Linux doesn't have this issue. Any help and possible solutions would be appreciated.

[atagunov]

Hi, I hope others help you better with this, for what it's worth I've got UCA202 connected to my T520. This is a relatively small and cheap external audio card. It's got a USB jack and is powered over USB. Ubuntu recognises it automatically. You basically plug your earphones or speakers into UCA202. Sound quality is better than with normal audio output jack. Unfortunately UCA202 doesn't work for me to input audio from an external microphone. It's missing "phono preamp" I understand. There exists a similar UCA with a different name with phone preamp. Perhaps my cheap/simple microphone would work with it.

Alternatively if you need to do audio conferencing (and perhaps even if you don't) you may be interested to hear that I have heard high praise for Jabra headsets. There exist USB Jabras that plug into USB and also work as an external audio card similar to my UCA202 but also have a working microphone. There also also exists wireless Bluetooth Jabras. I've heard nothing but praise about them too. I'm under impression that if Skype under Windows is your goal you're better off choosing Jabra with MS in the name not UC. Think Jabras have gotten extra exepensive (1/2 cost of T420 I guess) in the times of Covid and working from home.

I hope you get your audio issues fixed, just giving my evidence in case it helps. My setup even works well in Windows 10 running in KVM on Ubuntu 20.04 on T520 Passing the whole 2nd USB controller as a PCI device to VM

[thewezel]

Honestly, at this point i'm giving up for right now and I'm going to give 8.1 a try. As much as I dislike 8.1, it's getting security updates until 2023, and I'll probably be able to replace the start "menu" with something like OpenShell. It seems there are plenty of people having this issue, and that Microsoft is aware of this as according to this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... ws-10-2004. I'd imagine that the issue will be sorted out by the deadline to upgrade from 8.1, as plenty of machines with conexant audio hardware are still in use.

[dr_st]

Honestly, at this point i'm giving up for right now and I'm going to give 8.1 a try. As much as I dislike 8.1, it's getting security updates until 2023, and I'll probably be able to replace the start "menu" with something like OpenShell.

I'm using Classic Shell on my X220 which has Win8.1, and am quite happy about it.

[thewezel]

Turns out, windows 8.1 has the same issue. UGH!!!! So frustrating. It’s gonna take a miracle to fix this.

[dr_st]

Try LatencyMon to check for excessive ISR/DPC latencies (the thing that typically causes audio stuttering). It may even point to the faulting driver:
https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

[TitoLabieno]

Maybe it is a bit offtopic, but I experienced something similar on my T430. When I was listening to music or audio and web pages/applications/any CPU intensive process loaded, the audio glitched and I experienced stutering. I got a dock which came with an extra 90W AC adapter (the stock one was 65W) and since I've been using it the stuttering has disappeared. I would try using a 90W+ adapter if you have one lying around. I also thought it was due to drivers and I reinstalled and tried a lot of audio drivers but they didn't fix it. I performed a clean Windows install recently and everything is working smoothly with the default Windows drivers too, so I wouldn't blame the drivers. Btw does that problem happen only with Windows 8.1/10?

(Note: I always use the 3.5mm jack on the T430 itself, not the one on the dock. Also, it happened while I was using the stock i7-3520M, probably very similar to your stock i5-2520M or similar before upgrading to a quad core)

[dr_st]

Maybe it is a bit offtopic, but I experienced something similar on my T430. When I was listening to music or audio and web pages/applications/any CPU intensive process loaded, the audio glitched and I experienced stutering. I got a dock which came with an extra 90W AC adapter (the stock one was 65W) and since I've been using it the stuttering has disappeared. I would try using a 90W+ adapter if you have one lying around.

There is inherent throttling when a 65W adapter is used without a working battery attached, but it should not happen if the battery is okay.

[thewezel]

Try LatencyMon to check for excessive ISR/DPC latencies (the thing that typically causes audio stuttering). It may even point to the faulting driver:
https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

ive downloaded and ran the software and ill attach a screenshot (somehow) and it seems to point to acpi.sys and storport.sys. anybody know where i can find storage drivers? or what specific storage controller the t420 has?

EDIT: Ive swapped the linux drive with a spare ssd with a fresh copy of Windows 10 2004, I also seem to recall that windows 7 had the issue as well so, yeah, clearly I'm not configuring something right.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H9YHGI ... sp=sharing

[dr_st]

storport.sys is Microsoft's storage driver. I think normally it is not used if you have a driver from the manufacturer (Intel in this case), but I am not certain if Intel's storage drivers for this generation support Win10. Here Win10 is not mentioned, but the driver may still work. Or there can be a more up-to-date generic Intel driver that will work with this PC.

Now, if it happens only on a specific drive, there may be a compatibility issue or the drive is failing. You can check the Event Viewer to see if there are any errors reported by Storport.

[thewezel]

storport.sys is Microsoft's storage driver. I think normally it is not used if you have a driver from the manufacturer (Intel in this case), but I am not certain if Intel's storage drivers for this generation support Win10. Here Win10 is not mentioned, but the driver may still work. Or there can be a more up-to-date generic Intel driver that will work with this PC.

Now, if it happens only on a specific drive, there may be a compatibility issue or the drive is failing. You can check the Event Viewer to see if there are any errors reported by Storport.

I've tried the driver you mentioned, and virtually no difference. I think we're on the right track, though, as now we seem to have identified the culprit. It's a basically brand new SSD, and other drives ive tried had the same issue so i doubt its a failing drive. I think it's a driver problem as mentioned. I've been doing some digging and can't find ANY drivers for intel storage accept from the oem website. Maybe if there's a driver archive I'll try all versions of the storage driver and report back. If anybody is aware of where I could find an archive of those drivers. but, i thought this was interesting, https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... bf54cc6af6, even though its not the same chipset, that driver version might give me some luck. Although, I have no idea where to find it. I'll also check the event logs and see what's happening.

[thewezel]

after trying to install an incorrect storage driver, it lists two of them available and i disabled the one that was available to disable, and it seeks storport.sys isn't causing so much issues (atleast, it does cause issue at first after waking from sleep or startup, and rarely, but seems to be resolved, and may have been the main culprit for audio stuttering) and audio stuttering seems to be non existant (so far, or atleast not very common). So, I still have other things causing high latency, and if possible, I'd like to bring everything down as much as possible before officially calling the mission a success, as my gut tells me this could be problematic for trying to run games.
screenshots here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DEAY24 ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ff4fCv ... sp=sharing

I'd like to thank everyone for their help in narrowing down what the problem is. I think we're getting somewhere. I'm noticing some minimal audio issues much more rarely, and they're far less deal breaking for the user experience, but i'd like them to be zero,

Thanks again.

[thewezel]

At this point I've pretty much given up on the idea of running Windows on my ThinkPad. Latency issues are preventing me from being able to do anything that involves audio and I've received a free HP-2000 with a 3rd gen Core i3 (virtually identical performance to the ThinkPad) off of a friend which technically has those DPC latency issues, but it's not nearly as bad as the ThinkPad and only ever stutters when loading games(for example, CS:GO loading maps) and never when i'm watching anything or listening to music or what have you. If anyone has any ideas other ideas as to how I can fix audio on my ThinkPad, I'd love to hear them as it's a higher quality machine in my opinion in terms of build quality, screen is better, keyboard, trackpad absolutely rock! I've tried all possible solutions posted in this thread and none of them were able to solve the issues (except the external audio device). the thought occurred maybe botching an expresscard usb hub atleast for usb connectivity and putting the USB sound device inside either the laptop inside the chassis somewhere or perhaps a permanent expresscard solution and seeing if it's possible to hookup to the speakers via dirty soldering provided i can figure out that i'm hooking it up properly. It's been a while since i've been inside that laptop, but is it as easy as soldering the speaker wires to a 3.5mm jack? would there not be enough power to drive the speakers? Anybody have any thoughts on my idea? Advice as to whether or not this is possible? or even a good idea? The thought occurred to me that if i'm using the sound devices output for internal speakers, how could i connect headphones? perhaps two audio devices? I know this seems rather over complicated, why not just use headphones, and yes, good point but I also like using my laptops built in speakers sometimes and we're kind of in the middle of a pandemic and I could use more projects. In the meantime, I'll be using either my HP-2000 or main desktop for when I need to use Windows.