Audio/Sound fails in macOS Catalina

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.

Apple, can we not get something done about this? What an utter disappointment that this has not yet been corrected. This has been an issue since the beginning of OS Catalina and has not been addressed AT ALL in any updates. Not even acknowledged! Where is the competence with this enterprise? Restarting coreaudiod DOES NOT WORK. It's not a fix, it's not even a workaround! Even rebooting doesn't set things right again every time. FIX THIS APPLE!

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. 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.

I have the exact same issue.

At first, I thought my audio interface was the culprit but after uninstalling it and restart the iMac (Pro), I still have the same problem. When I go to the settings I see that the audio output popup jumps from Microphone Output to nothing each second or so (before, it jumped to the native output to my audio interface output).

OS: 10.15.5

I had hopes that this was the fix, but no. The behavior persists after this update.

Apple has utterly dropped the ball on this issue and seems to have no interest in legitimately fixing it.

Very disappointing.

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.

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!

The reason the Music app sounds terrible, is because Apple dropped the ball here. On my Macbook Pro running Catalina, music playback sounds so terrible, the app plays back the music losing the sound on one channel and sometimes when the sound comes back it is so low. It's so bad that i had to macOS Mojave on a virtual machine so i could use iTunes.

Same issue, audio seems to come and go depending the app. Albeton LIVE 10 is hit or miss, also voice memo. I think ZOOM app has something to do with but I haven't been able to get any consistent results. Hopeful there is an update SOON to correct this. I bought an apple for audio stability lol...

I don’t think Apple will be fixing this issue anytime soon. It’s sad for all the faults people thought of iTunes at least the sound was great. This music app falls far below the standards of what we expect from Apple.

I just purchased a new laptop (MacBook Pro 13-inch, 2020 running Catalina 10.15.6) and am experiencing this as well. I wrote a script to kill core audio and that seems to help but it often happens in the middle of a meeting and I miss several seconds conversation. Obviously I'd prefer it if this didn't happen at all. I didn't experience this on my old laptop (MacBook Pro 15-inch, Mid 2015 running Catalina 10.15.4).

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

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?