A loud "Beep" sound for Lossless Music

Oh man, glad I'm not the only one. I've had this happen to me a couple of times now and it's absolutely horrifying.

Note: this is the first time I've used the word 'horryfing' when describing using an Apple product...or any other product, actually.

The noise is played at full volume at an excruciating frequency through your headphones, and that's plenty to cause some serious hearing problems.

But then there's the jump scare.

You're never too young to get a heart attack, but I don't want Apple's music service to lower that age even more for me.

The problem occurs with both wired and Bluetooth headphones, and seems to occur especially when switching playlists. I'm on a 2018 Mac Mini that runs the latest software updates (macOS Big Sur 11.4).

Never thought that the user experience of an Apple product would be harmful for my health.

Exactly the same issue, only my iMac is hooked up to an X3300W Denon amp, driving Jamo C809 speakers which were $4,000 new via QED Gold cables....The feedback blew my tweeters, so as you can imagine, I'm not a happy puppy right now and iv'e had to replace them....

Apart from that, the noise made me jump out of my skin { Glad I don't have a weak heart }....Tried all the usual formatted standard advise on restarts, NVRAM Reset and SMC reset etc, and even went to the extremes of a full system recovery and reinstall { Even though my iMac is only 6 months old } It's a software / bug problem for sure from Apple, so I really hope they sort it out, before people start suing them for new speakers and eardrum damage. Just glad I don't wear headphones.

KEAGAN YOU ABSOLUTE LEGEND!

I turned sound enhancer off and BOOM everything is working perfectly!

Been testing by spamming switching tracks for a couple mins and NO F***king BEEPS AT ALL! ZERO!

My ears thank you lad, just hope all the previous beeps didn't do any permanent damage to my ears or headphones lol.

Have the same issue. I'm listening on external speakers and it's annoying especially at night when I don't want to wake up anyone. Please, fix this issue. It started happening the moment I've updated my MB to 11.4.

I noticed this issue on my MacBook Pro and I'm using an external DAC with passive speakers driven by an amplifier and a subwoofer as well. However lossless encoded from CDs or converted from FLAC is fine.

We also didn't notice this issue on iOS devices and we hope that clarifies.

I have the same problem, on a Macbook Air M1 2020, Big Sur 11.4. It usually happens, when a song switches from non-Lossless to Lossless. It's specially irritating and probably damaging to the ears with headphones on. It has caught me off guard a couple of times because it is very loud with headphones on, in spite of volume being at low level. Im thinking of suing Apple.

I have the same issue. The sound hurts my ears to a point that I am scared to use my earphones. its very bad. Please help Apple. How/ what do I switch off. I am considering using a different player. Many of my friends are saying that Spotify is better than Apple Music. iMusic was really good. I am not enjoying the Apple Music experience.

I have the same terrible beep sound on my MacBook Pro M1 as well as my Mac Mini M1.

Now I followed the advise of KeganAI and switched off the "Sound Enhancer" in the preference of the Music App. Now the beep is gone. Thanks a lot for you support!

I've tried it with sound enhancer on and so far it works. I used wired headphones and held them away from my ears!

I tried new lossless tracks, some from my library and jumped about - no beep so far.

It wasn't in the list of things the update does. Apple still seems to be denying the existence of the beep.

But if it works I'm not going to argue.

Holy crap, the update dit NOT fix this: I just jumped up from my seat and tore my headphones off because 'the beep' was there again.

This is an unacceptable and downright dangerous bug, Apple. FIX THIS!

I also have that "beep" sound on the Apple Music app on my macbook (early 2015, with macOS Big Sur 11.5.1), which is a blast and hurts when using wired headphones (I don't have wireless headphones to try). For that reason, I'm avoiding the use of headphones on my mac, and that upsets me, cause I use it every day.

Apparently it doesn't follow any pattern other than happening at the beginning of a track.

P.S.: I have enabled both Lossless audio and Spatial audio, but not all tracks I listen are with those formats. Also I will try KeganAI's suggestion of disabling "Sound Enhancer".

I would not be surprised if Apple patched it with the release of macOS Big Sur 11.5.2. However, I have not tested for this reason:

If you are interested in high end audio then stick with your ALAC/24/192 settings.

You don't want or need "Sound enhancer" as it increases the perceived “wideness” of the stereo effect by modifying bass and treble response. A high quality audio system would be degraded by this "enhancement," in my opinion.

Try not to modify your source material.. instead, upgrade your amplifier and change your speaker placement if you need to improve your sound.

Well, this (and some other minor peaves) has turned me off of Apple Music completely. It's back to Spotify for me.

I don't want to be that guy who complains a lot and makes a big statement about rejecting a certain product. It won't hurt Apple in the least.

But I just want to share my disappointment in Apple for letting a truly physically damaging error like this persist in their software.

I tried to love Apple Music. And though the highs were high (I really enjoyed the audio quality, the look of the app), the lows were more frequent and increasingly difficult to crawl out of. The 'beep' is the one low I can't get over.

I'm mostly concerned about my speakers as I've never heard this issue while wearing headphones (I can only imagine), but I JUST bought a brand new MacBook pro and this happened. Do we have anything to be worried about? I mean seriously. I can't hear anything (noticeable to my ear) that sounds like the speakers aren't working or are blown, but I hate that I'm even having to think about it after only 3 days of having it because of, of all things, apple music.... 😡

[Edited by Moderator]

Hi Chris...As another commenter has pointed out, just go to iMusic preferences, playback, uncheck sound enhancer and you can play in full lossless...Earlier in this thread, you will see that I have blown the tweeters on my speakers, but that's because I have my iMac hooked up to my stereo system. I'm driving Jamo C809's via a Denon amp...Your internal MacBook speakers aren't subject to external amplification, so they'll be fine, but like I said, if you uncheck sound enhancer it should resolve the issue until Apple come up with a fix...It worked for me and many others..If you want to further enhance the sound, go along your top bar, select window and in the dropdown you'll see graphic equaliser...Turn on the pre amp and hit acoustic...The first three sliders are Bass...You may want to drop the bass down as it's quite heavy, but this method does the same job as sound enhancer but without the horrible feedback..Hope this helps Chris.