There is a cracking/popping sound when I play music/video using the mbp speakers, and jump to next song/video

Same here. Brand new MBP 16-inch base model.

Happens on YouTube in Safari when skipping around the video, or when closing the tab that's playing the video. Pops come randomly out of the left or right speaker whenever the sound is stopped abruptly. Doesn't happen when skipping around an MP4 video in QT Player. Doesn't happen when playing music in Spotify and skipping around - but it does happen in Spotify if I stop the sound abruptly by closing the lid or plugging in headphones.

Another reliable way to reproduce: Utilities > Audio MIDI Setup > MacBook Pro Speakers > Configure Speakers > click either of the Test buttons in the bottom right corner of the window. You'll (usually) hear a click after the test noise stops.

Would be great to know if this is hardware or software related. I'm assuming it's a driver issue at this stage.

BTW there are other reports of this issue with the 16-inch appearing at the end of this thread on the 2019 15-inch model:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250758649?page=3

There is a "stupid" workaround: just put an empty mp3 files in background, I mean a long mp3 file of "silence".

If you are lazy like me, this could be automated with crontab that run "afplay" shell command every hour (my mp3 is 1h long), or with automator that run same command.

Losing 1% of cpu, but problem is solved.

Hope that Apple fix this issue with a more elegant solution.

Bye from Italy.

I had the same issue, it was very obvious when playing video on Chrome and Final Cut Pro.

I received a replacement MacBook 16 Inch in store after a thorough inspection and I still had the same issue in the new MacBook 16 Inch. I got support through Apple Chat and they got me on a call with a senior technical advisor who promptly asked me to submit files through a link so it goes through to the engineering team. I submitted several screen recordings of this popping noise on multiple programs, some more apparent than others. I also mentioned the YouTube videos/threads and the advisor did reassure that they will be looking into this issue and get back to me within 4 days. He said that over time they will be either be developing a software update or creating a new replacement model depending on the findings by the engineering team.

[Edited by Moderator]

Searching forums and found a temp solution that seems to work. Open Quicktime Player and select new recording and keep it minimized and then play audio/video and problem seems to go away. Good solution for those of you who like to skip clips on YT.

SO HERE IS SOMETHING INTERESTING -- I plugged my MBP (16 2019) into my Thunderbolt 2 display using a StarTech T2->T3 converter box and then routed the audio to play through the display AND this has the same cracking issue. It did not occur when plugged into an LG ultra fine and routing audio the same NOR when I play through bluetooth speakers.

SO I am guessing that the issue is between the MBP drivers and Apple Speaker/Audio modules.

Hi Nicholas, It's unfortunate we don't get any official word from Apple, at least, I haven't seen it, but I installed 10.15.5 the other day and think it's fixed. I need a few weeks to do various testing.

I'd go for the update. See how it works out for you and let us know.

Thanks!

-Vincent

10.15.2 Beta 4 solves the issue. So we have to wait until 10.15.2 Final will be released.

Happy to report that 10.15.2 did the trick for me.

Another confirmation that after the update, only 48KHz setting eliminates the problem. I remember that the sample rate setting did not help before the update.

I got my 16 inch MBP last Friday and I noticed popping sound when skipping video or closing tabs. Also, see the thread of Macrumors. From the vote we can see this issue is widespread.

I believe it's a software issue since if I play some music in background and keep it muted, then the popping sound disappears no matter what I do. So there may be some issues with the audio driver or related codecs, I'm not an expert of this. I hope Apple could investigate this and give an official explanation.

Not sure if this helps, but every time there's a pop when you skip in YouTube, this error appears (tens of times) in the Console:

default 17:35:04.917068+1100 com.apple.WebKit.WebContent SourceBufferPrivateAVFObjC::enqueueSample(89250002) prerollDecodeWithCompletionHandler failed

I don't see this error on my 2010 MBP (macOS 10.13.16) when skipping around in YouTube (with no pops of course).

Here is temporary "fix":

Open tab with 10h video -> play it -> mute the audio.

Also switch to 144p resolution to save the bandwidth and cpu resources.

I was ready to send it back but it does look like the software issue. I will give Apple 2 weeks to fix it but if they won't, I will send it back for refund. The premium price should come with premium quality.

I'm quite sure that this is a tech/design-issue with the speakers

when you skip through a sound it's very likely that you do this while a waveform is not at zero-crossing.

It's normal that you get clicks then. If this happens at certain frequencies the speaker are resonating stronger the click gets louder.

This should be fixable with the software or even the audio-driver by doing some very short fades when skipping.

I'm not quite sure why it goes completely away at 96 kHz and why this doesn't work for you.

So the update fixed my speaker issue but now I’m having brightness issues with the screen when it wakes up from sleep. I also had sparks occurring while inserting a wire into the usb c ports. It only happened when I have a usb c adapter plugged in with an active hdmi connection. It’s weird, this laptop is full of issues. Doesn’t feel like it was ready for release.

Well considering I've seen quite a few people on Reddit and some here (including myself) that had great success with the popping sound going away after the update perhaps you should get an exchange. Updates don't work only for certain machines. Results should be the same for everyone. We're all using the 16" MBP here, so something may be faulty with your machine.