Aluminum MacBook Vista Sound Clipping Issue Solved

In my review of the Late 2008 Macbook, I had noted that there were audio clipping issues in Windows Vista. Other Mac users note that it’s a common problem that occurs with both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the OS. As odd as it sounds, the issue is being caused the the Broadcom wireless drivers. For all intents and purposes, the Macbook is pretty much a system on a chip in that the Geforce 9400M controls everything other than the CPU. So seemingly unrelated conflicts in one area can cause problems in another. Fortunately, solving the problem is easy enough as updating the driver.

LaptopVideo2Go offers an updated driver for the Macbook’s Broadcom wireless adaptor.
Navigate to the site I linked and look for this.

Driver for Vista and XP in both x86 and x64:
Broadcom 943xx v5.10.38.26 driver

It should be at the top of the list. Click the red link to download it. Unzip the package to somewhere convenient.

Go into the Windows Control Panel and open Device Manager. Look for Network Adaptors and click to expand the list. You should see something labled “Broadcom Wireless N Adaptor” or something similar. Double click to open the properties window for it.

You’ll have to manually install the drivers for it. Click the “Driver” tab. Then click “Update Driver“. From there select “Browse my computer for driver software“. Next, select “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer”. It will open another window with a list of potential drivers. Ignore that and click “Have Disk” below the list. Another window will open prompting you to navigate to the driver. Click browse and navigate to where you unzipped the driver to. The folder containing the drivers should be called “Broadcom_V5.10.38.26“, which should contain a subfolder labelled “Vista”. Open it and select “bcmwl6” and click open. It will go back to a list of drivers. Select “Broadcom 4321AG 802.11a/b/g/draft-n Wi-Fi Adaptor” and click “Next” Windows will install the driver for you and prompt you to restart your computer.

Reportedly, it doesn’t entirely fix the problem but it does clear up most of the clipping. I’ve been using the new driver all this evening and I haven’t encountered issues yet. This fix should be a god send for Mac users who want to use their laptops for gaming or watching Blu-ray movies.