Loud burst of noise between songs while listening to Apple Music on MacBook Pro

I'm having the same issue on my 2019 16" MacBook Pro. For now, what seems to have solved it for me is: on Music for macOS, go to Preferences (Command + ,) and in the Playback tab, turn off Sound Enhancer. Hopefully it'll work for you too.

Hey there Username_42,

Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. We understand that you're hearing a loud sound periodically when playing Apple Music. We're happy to provide some assistance.

Since this does not occur when using your AirPods, let's try the steps outlined here:

If you can’t hear sound from your Mac speakers

If the issue persists, see if this occurs in safe mode to help isolate the issue:

Start up your Mac in safe mode

If the issue continues after that, do you notice if this occurs with specific songs? Try removing those songs and re-downloading them.

We hope this helps.

Have a great day!

This worked for me too! So refreshing not to be startled out of my seat between songs! JEESH.

to add a bit of detail for others:

• I only experienced the "POP" when playing through my CalDigit hub > with External Speakers.
• I did not experience it on AirPods, Macbook Pro Speakers, or when I plugged the external speakers directly into the Macbook Pro headphone jack (External Headphones).

Unchecking Sound Enhancer did the trick!

Thanks Username_42!

I'm seeing this on all of my Macs right now with built-in speakers as well as AirPods Pro.

CORRECTION: Turning off Sound Enhancer seems to have helped. May be worth a try turning it off.

I’m glad I was able to help!

Same here: I’m so happy I can listen to the music I love again without temporarily crippling my hearing.

Hopefully Apple will solve this bug soon, so we’ll never have to suffer hearing that awful popping sound whether we choose to turn the Sound Enhancer on or off.

Does Apple have any kind of resolution or comment on this? I'd like to be able to listen to tracks at high quality without having the loud pop. Getting pretty annoying playing Russian roulette with my ears while listening to music.

Also, I've tried the above workarounds as well as connected with tech support to do troubleshooting and it's still happening. This typically only occurs when manually switching between songs or playing music after Apple Music has been off/idle for some time. I'm only experiencing the problem only on my 2021 iMac using the internal speakers - has been happening since I purchased it.

If I don't get the loud pop, I get stuttering for the first few seconds of the song then it goes away and seems to not show up again until the next time I play music after a break.

I used to have this issue too. I solved it temporarily by turning the Sound Enhancer feature off. I wasn't happy about having to listen to my music as "non-enhanced," but that was better than the deafening beeps.

I upgraded to macOS Monterey yesterday, and I'm happy to share that now, even with the Sound Enhancer turned on while listening to songs streamed in Lossless format, my Music app makes no sound beeps or any weird "stuttering" noises at the beginning of any songs. At least in my experience, it seems like Monterey on my 2019 16" MacBook Pro fixed these issues.

Good luck, everyone!

Yes, I updated to Monterey and it seems to have fixed whatever problem there was!