Audio/Sound fails in macOS Catalina

Me, too! I don’t have Parallels.

Every few hours, I have to restart coreaudiod in the activity window.

The new update 10.15.3 doesn’t fix the problem.

Same issue here (MB Pro 2019 Catalina 10.15.3). It's frustrating. Restarting coreaudiod process returns the sound back.

I have the same problem on Catalina. I have a Macbook Pro 16" (brand new, but also happened on my previous macbook pro after upgrading to Catalina). For me, this issue occurs with my Bose USB audio system and Apple Music.

1) Play Music

2) Pause track

3) Start track again - no sound.

What I have to do all the time is unplug and re-plug in the Bose USB audio. When I unplug the Bose USB audio, the song is playing through the next audio device (usually my displays plugged in via USB C). After reconnecting the Bose USB audio, the audio switches back over to the Bose and plays normally.

Is this a problem with older USB devices? I'm using a dongle to connect the older USB to USB-C port.

Same problem: closing the lid on my 2015 MBP on Catalina and then reopening leaves me with no sound. Using terminal to kill coreaudio gets sound back. You can also use Activity Monitor and force quit the coreaudio process.

Strangely, in the logs the audio failures that can be fixed by restarting coreaudiod always coincide with a series of ASL log messages, with a format like:

"25 Apr 2020 at 02:04:05 coreaudiod[209]: BUG in libdispatch: 19E287 - 2914 - 0x4"

When the speaker icon on the bar starts "blinking" (like going on and off), I found stuff like this:

"25 Apr 2020 at 01:57:25 loginwindow[185]: BUG in libdispatch: 19E287 - 2914 - 0x4

25 Apr 2020 at 01:57:32 Skype Helper (Renderer)[30242]: BUG in libdispatch: 19E287 - 2914 - 0x4

25 Apr 2020 at 01:57:32 SystemUIServer[415]: BUG in libdispatch: 19E287 - 2914 - 0x4

25 Apr 2020 at 01:57:32 Google Chrome[402]: BUG in libdispatch: 19E287 - 2914 - 0x4

25 Apr 2020 at 01:57:32 Skype Helper[30246]: BUG in libdispatch: 19E287 - 2914 - 0x4

25 Apr 2020 at 01:57:32 corespeechd[698]: BUG in libdispatch: 19E287 - 2914 - 0x4

25 Apr 2020 at 01:57:32 Skype[30236]: BUG in libdispatch: 19E287 - 2914 - 0x4

25 Apr 2020 at 01:57:44 Quake3-UrT.x86_64[31814]: BUG in libdispatch: 19E287 - 2914 - 0x4

25 Apr 2020 at 01:57:52 NotificationCenter[438]: BUG in libdispatch: 19E287 - 2914 - 0x4

25 Apr 2020 at 01:57:52 mediaremoted[115]: BUG in libdispatch: 19E287 - 2914 - 0x4

25 Apr 2020 at 01:57:52 Google Chrome Helper[806]: BUG in libdispatch: 19E287 - 2914 - 0x4

25 Apr 2020 at 01:58:03 xpcproxy[31823]: libcoreservices: _dirhelper_userdir: 557: bootstrap_look_up returned (ipc/send) invalid destination port

25 Apr 2020 at 01:58:04 iconservicesd[31823]: BUG in libdispatch: 19E287 - 1775 - 0x1

25 Apr 2020 at 01:58:04 login[31824]: USER_PROCESS: 31824 ttys000

25 Apr 2020 at 01:59:03 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: Service only ran for 5 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 5 seconds.

25 Apr 2020 at 01:59:32 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: Service only ran for 4 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 6 seconds."

Same issue. I have the blackmagic external gpu which connects to my monitor. The monitor has a sound out that I use to drive speakers. When connected the sound output device is LG HDR WQHD. If I leave the laptop for any length of time such that it sleeps then when I come back I still have video to the monitor, but the sound output is coming out of the laptop (clamshelled in a stand). The audio device for the monitor doesn't show up in output devices. I have to click to disconnect from the GPU (and monitor), open the laptop (so I can see), then unplug the usb-c that goes to the blackmagic and plug it back it. Then it re-connects to the blackmagic, the sound output device shows up, and sound starts coming back out of the speakers that are connected to the monitor. So, it seems Catalina has an issue with going into sleep or power saving and preserving sound devices.

In the new update 10.15.5 of OS X Catalina is a sound fix for Macs with T2 security chip:

• Addresses an issue for Mac computers with the Apple T2 Security Chip where internal speakers may not appear as a sound output device in Sound preferences

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210642

Maybe it fixes the problem.

Reseting coreaudiod did the job. Thanks!

Restarting coreaudiod made it worked. Looks like bug in Catalina

A senior advisor told me to log into as test. Audio worked fine. Went back to regular login and it still works. He wanted us to stay on as test until 2 days from now and only login into regular account since we can't remember FB login. We'll see.

I installed the supplemental update at the time it was released, and the situation seems to have improved. But since I did then the problem occurred at least once. At least it seems to reduce the frequency of the issue.

Evening all,

So I've got similar issues but not as drastic as a lot of you...

I'm on a MacBook Pro 13" 2015 (3.1Ghz/16GB/512SSD) running 10.15.5

I'm a live sound engineer, so while I say my issues aren't as bad as others as the sound always returns, they can still be pretty bad and show stopping for me...

1) Audio Controls Freezing

This *seems* to be limited to when using an external soundcard, but I may be wrong... it just hasn't happened when using the minijack output yet... So... When using the volume up and down buttons slowly, or fast, the system can *hang* and either;

A - Mute playback and pause / freeze whatever video may be playing until it realises where the volume should be and then unmute at the volume level and the video then catches up fast forwarding to then be in sync

B - While it is working out what volume level it needs to go too, it continues to play the last 1 bar ish of music over and over and over on top of itself then jumps to the right volume and carries on - SUPER annoying...

It's got the the point now where it is that regular that the volume freezes that I don't even touch the controls and I use the volume knob on the audio interface I'm using - very annoying!

2) Audio Muting

Now, this one is more worrying but similar to what other people here have been experiencing

The Mac can be playing audio from anywhere, YouTube, Music App, Logic, Final Cut, Safari and just randomly mutes the output completely for around 2-5 seconds... then the audio returns, as if nothing happened...

In terms of programs I've got installed that others have mentioned;

• Clean My Mac X - But I've had this YEARS so really doubt it is anything to do with that...
• Parallels - This was installed recently but again, the problems happened way before that, all with Caralina, which was a completely fresh install too.

As others have said, if it's having big issues (but be aware in mine my audio always does come back so it's normally not enough time to open Activity monitor and restart core audio, or worth it etc) restarting core audio if you catch it quick enough does work. So does restarting and resetting the PRAM.

Just such an odd chain of events and makes the Mac not *good/safe* enough for live performances, or relying on even for video conferences... Glad I haven't updated the rest of them at work yet!

Luckily at the moment due to Coronavirus, this Mac isn't on live work. It's all studio based. but not ideal!!

The issue (ignoring the control ones as I don't touch them now) seems to happened not all the time too, can work fine for HOURS of a recording / mix session, not even do it once... But then later watching Netflix / Youtube it happens... so odd... (it has happened once when recording so Logic isn't exempt FYI too)...

Last thing to note is the Mac is setup permanently at the moment and never off, "prevent computer from sleeping when display is off" is selected, ie, the computer never sleeps, the screen goes off after like 3 hrs, if it did sleep then I might run into more issues like *having* to restart core audio or the Mac due to it properly going...

Very frustrating!

Any help / tips greatly received!

Cheers,

Chris

God this is really frustrating, The 10.15.4 Catalina update has not resolved the bug at all. I still have to keep restarting the coreaudiod service when on a call or listening to anything for that matter. If this does not get resolved soon a trip to the Genius bar it is for an exchange or refund.

Same issue here (MacBook Pro 2017), specifically after upgrading to Catalina. So this is a Catalina bug.

Restarting coreaudiod does not help; only restarting the entire system helps. This needs to be fixed.