Audio/Sound fails in macOS Catalina

This worked for me. Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor. Under the CPU tab find (or search for) coreaudiod. Select it and then click the Stop button in the toolbar. When prompted, click Quit. This will restart the coreaudiod process and may bring your audio back.

The problem could be a driver issue. I had MJRecorderdevice.driver in /Library/Audio/Plugins/HAL. Some programs will let you change the volume setting on that, or you can get rid of it completely with sudo rm -rf <driver name>

The MJRecorder driver is installed by some programs when you start them up, so if you need it, it will come back the next time you use the program that installed it.

I've the same problem. I found out that unloading and loading again audio driver solves the issue without reboot.

Create a file Desktop/fix_audio.sh with the following inside in:

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext

sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext

Then issue chmod +x Desktop/fix_audio.sh command in terminal

When you experience problem with sound run sudo Desktop/fix_audio.sh command in terminal

Same problem here - brand new Macbook Air with Catalina. It happens while using wired headphones and I also noticed in the system preferences that the entire contents of the Audio device subsystem just disappear.

Usually when it happens it comes together with some event that causes a speed increase in the fans, to the point of becoming audible (I cannot explain if this caused by an increase in the CPU load or the load increase itself is caused by the intermittent failure of the sound subsystem, as the speaker icon in the menu bar appears and disappears randomly, sometimes in fast sequence).

A coreaudiod restart apparently solves the issue. But this is quite annoying - until I discovered the cause I had to restart the computer, as it often happens in the middle of videoconference sessions,

I feel almost "happy" to read I'm not the only one having to restart Coreaudiod after startup from activity monitor in order to get Audio running.

I spent hours trying to find what was messing sound on my MacBook Pro, and I finally made an Automator action that I run after start-up (launch Activity Monitor > search for Coreaudiod > kill it > close Activity Monitor).

After reading all of you, it's obvious for me that it is a bug.

Hope Apple will soon consider it.

Same over here. If I restart coreaudiod it works. First I thought I had a hardware problem but it seems to be a bug in Catalina. What do you think?

I think i found the problem. Are you guys using Parallels? If i dont start it, than restart and never reopen Parallels the audio works fine. When i start Parallels the audio bugs after some minutes/hours.

Hey Guys,

The latest update macOS Catalina 10.15.4 Supplemental Update fixed the issue with Audio device on my MacBook Air 2019. Try it!

macOS Catalina 10.15.4 Supplemental Update introduces iCloud Drive folder sharing, Screen Time communications limits, Apple Music time-synced lyrics view, and more. The update also improves the stability, reliability, and security of your Mac.

BR,

D

This issue of sound cutting in/out (regardless of video player choice, or if it was something like a microsoft teams meeting) was hitting my 1 year old macbook air (updated with latest version of catalina). Your comment about clean my mac (which i recently downloaded) got me remembering some 'silly' problem messages it was alerting me to.

I deleted clean my mac and so far the sound trouble has not reoccurred.

So, thank you!

Try resetting the SMC.

How to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support

When we called tech support we were told to make a test user account. Worked fine so we went back to the original account and it still works fine.

Just wanted to let you know that I solved my problem(s).

Actually, in my case, even though it was similar to you, it has nothing to do with Apple per se:

1) I had my audio input in the System settings flickering and making my browsers freeze and sound disappear. It actually was because of an online program downloaded weeks ago that was malfunctioning. Don't remember the name but it was an installer supposed to record audio from the browser. Easy to forget and overlook. But once I uninstalled it, everything went fine.

My second problem was that my "Coreaudiod" service (plist) was nowhere to be found. That ended up being"CleanMyMac"'s fault which deactivated this file. Once reactivated, everything worked just fine.

I'm sure your problems are different but if anyone has a similar experienced (especially since "CleanMyMac" is popular, well, there you have it.

If I restart in the activity window coreaudiod then the sound comes back.

You can restart coreaudiod in the activity window.