Yeti Blue Mic Not Recognized on M1 Mac

additional suggestion: try a thicker USB cable for the Mic

warning: i am now in confirmation bias territory, however i believe i found another piece of evidence to support my theory.

additional observations

• I tried the same Mic USB cable that induced a crash in the working USB-C port. this time, the Mic lights came on, but it did not show up in the Mac Sound Input list
• I used a different USB cable of similar length, and it worked.
• I noticed that the working USB cable is thicker than the non-working cable

This supports the theory that the issue is power related. Again i'm not like an electrical engineer, but to me a thicker cable indicates greater power delivery capacity. I will update the suggestion list in my original reply.

*edit: welp i guess it's too late to edit my original post. side note: the design for this forum makes it hard for me to follow discussions.

I'm not sure what to point you to for further troubleshooting, but if you're looking for data points, I have a Yeti Blue that I've used for years on multiple Macs, and it is currently connected to a 16" MBP M1 Max, using a Nonda USB-C adapter, and is seen on the USB 3.1 bus no problem. The mic works in Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and other applications and works reliably. I have had no issues with it disappearing from the system. My systems are currently on Sonoma 14.4.

Just wanted to say I have the same exact problem as you.

Yeti says they only support up to ver14.0. which is obviously unacceptable

Depending on the age of the Blue Yeti, there was a vendor acknowledged USB hardware issue but that is for really old Blue Yeti that have not been sold in well over a decade. If you provided Yeti with a serial number and they told you it was a hardware issue with the microphone, then you should believe them despite its sporadic functionality.

As this is not an Apple product, your only real task left is to update Sonoma to 14.4 and see if that has a positive change for Yeti functionality. Otherwise, you may need to consider a new Mic purchase where the vendor acknowledges its compatibility with Sonoma, your applications, and current Mac hardware.

I have not. But I did just do a test to at least find some logs for you. If you open a Terminal window, you can check the output of "dmesg". You have to use sudo to run it, so the full command would be "sudo dmesg". When I connected the Yeti, it output the following and then some:

[277088.184982]: AppleUSBXHCICommandRing: AppleUSBXHCICommandRing::executeCommand: command[60] 0x0000000000000000 00000000 17013c01 got result 0x0000010007b003c0 13000000 17008401 after 0ms (enqueued 0ms)
[277088.185005]: AppleUSBXHCICommandRing: AppleUSBXHCICommandRing::stopEndpoint: completed with result code 19
[277088.222265]: AppleUSB20HubPort@02330000: AppleUSBHostPort::enumerateDeviceComplete_block_invoke: enumerated 0xb58e/9e84/0100 (Yeti Stereo Microphone / 23) at 12 Mbps
[277088.225205]: Yeti Stereo Microphone@02330000: IOUSBHostDevice::setConfigurationGated: AppleUSBHostCompositeDevice selected configuration 1
[277088.230426]: + IOAudioDevice[<ptr>]::init(<ptr>)

You may want to try that just after it stops working and focus on any errors related to "IOAudioDevice" or "Yeti". Hope that can shed light on it for you.

Thanks to all for the info and to the Author for raising this issue. I too will add some data points and keep this thread active.

tl;dr

I haven't read every single post in depth, but I found what appears to be a workaround on the same exact Macbook Pro model.

Try some combination of the following 👏💻

• Try to plug the mic into a different USB-C port on the laptop (the left side ports work for me, but the right one did not)
• If on a laptop, plug it into a power source. Ensure that the battery level is above like 50% (arbitrary % value, just make sure it's at least above critical battery levels).
• If you're using a USB-C hub converter (i.e. multiple USB-A ports, ethernet, etc), try with a USB-C converter that only takes a single connection.
• Try to plug the mic into the USB-C adapter using a different USB cable

Disclaimer 🙈

I'm not sure if what I've observed is fully consistent with the Author's observations. The fact that they observe the same behavior in response to the presence of a file does seem like a software problem. So there ultimately could be multiple issues at play. My workaround is also not what I'd call "exhaustively tested", tho I'm fairly confident in the rationale, and it works even after a reboot. I go into detail down below for those that are curious.

My observations 💻 👀

I also see Yeti Blue Mic weirdness on my M1 Macbook Pro on Sonoma--an outdated version though: 14.2.1.

My Macbook Pro is running on battery.

I'm using an IXCC USB-C adapter. I trust it because I've used it with this laptop for other high-powered devices.

At first, the Mic showed up in Mac's Sound Input and even recorded in Audacity, but it kept disconnecting/reconnecting when I would move the Mic USB wire around.

Then the Mic started to show up in Sonoma's Audio Input Device list and detect audio, but it wasn't visible in Audacity.

At another point in time with a different USB cable, Sonoma straight up crashed. This happened with the cable in the right side USB-C port, which is next to the HDMI port on this Macbook Pro.

I tried on my Windows 10 desktop, and I discovered that the Yeti mic's USB cable was faulty.

With yet another USB cable, the mic works perfectly fine on Windows (direct USB connection, no USB-C adapter).

Using this same cable on Mac, it showed up in the Audio Input Device list once again, but not in Audacity.

I then switched the USB-C adapter to a different USB port on the Macbook. THIS WORKED. As in, I could record in Audacity and hear the recording in glorious clarity. I don't know if it will last, but it works for now. Nothing changed except that I switched from the right side USB-C adapter to the left side USB-C adapter closest to me.

My guess as to why this works?

USB-C port power delivery. This is simply an intuitive guess based on my experience in local multiplayer video game development* and DJ mixing with multiple USB MIDI controllers connected to this same laptop.

The Yeti Blue Mic I have is quite hefty, has lots of lights, so it would seem to need a good amount of power.

Anyway, after it started working, it hit me. I noticed that the M1 Macbook pro USB-C ports on the left side are right next to the charging port. Without looking at the Macbook's schematics, I'd guess that the battery has got to be close to the charging port, right? Given this, I'd say that the USB-C ports on the left (charging) side get more power than the one on the right.

I think the brief connection I saw was when the right side USB-C port was delivering enough power to function. The disconnection would happen when the USB-C power delivery fell below a functional connection threshold for the Mic.

--

*In that setup, we had up to 4 XBox 360 gamepads connected to a single USB hub. We would run the game on a laptop. After a while (maybe around an hour), the controllers started to disconnect. The gamepad power lights turned off. At the time, I was kind of freaking out and didn't know what was wrong.

After some more experience, I feel like it was something to do with power. That experience was something like: I didn't notice the issue after I plugged the laptop into a power source.