Macbook pro 16" M1 pro 2021 popping sound OS 12.0.1

Hi Tommy8850,

Sorry to hear you're experiencing issues with you new Mac.

I feel I can shed some light on this as an owner of several 2021 16" models (of which all of them experience this crackling noise) as well as having a background in Audio engineering.

This speaker popping is sadly - and more frustratingly - an issue that stems back some time and occurs across apps: both native to Apple and 3rd party ones. Apple support are aware of the issue (I've been frequently advised of this each time I log the issue with Apple support directly). When I first got the 16" model back in 2019 not long after buying it, it started exhibiting this issue. The crackling/popping started when scrubbing through videos in YouTube, then would move into apps: Final cut, logic and even Adobe at times, as well as the music app (to name a few).

I've seen numerous reports across forums about the popping appearing when the machine undertaking high CPU tasks: this is certainly one of the ways the popping becomes visible, but from my new 2021 machines I've had the popping sound appear across both native Apple and 3rd party apps with varying CPU usage. I am certain it's a deep rooted software issue: so deep rooted in fact I'm using some of my own monitoring equipment to try and send data to help Apple as this issue has been going on - in my eyes - a bit too long now and is starting to become frustrating.

I'm not aware of 12.1 completely fixing the issue, as I've had a couple of crackles and pops here and there but so far if it's stopped for the time being, fingers crossed you're system will continue to work popping free - it'd be great if you could keep us posted on this.

All the best!

Hi,

Unfortunately I am also facing this issue…

The A-mac store told me that Apple is not able to source this problem. For those reason they are not able to fix this problem for me…

You would not expect this from a machine with this price tag on it.

I’m very disappointed that I bought this laptop.

Ok, I have just tried this and seems to be working ok for now (i have managed to listen to one full song without the issue which is a win at the moment)

1. Go > Computer > Macintosh HD > Library > Preferences > Audio
2. Delete the com.apple.audio.DeviceSettings.plist and com.apple.audio.SystemSettings.plist files
3. Empty bin
4. Restart your Mac
5. Keep your fingers crossed

This fixed most of these problems for me. Open Audio MIDI Setup. Change the format to 44,100 Hz. Mine was set 48,000 Hz at default.

I've made some progress on this issue. It was discovered earlier in the thread that the audio glitches/pops start to occur when there is high memory swap activity. I've found that 9 times out of 10 the cause of my high memory usage is Safari - typically when I have several YouTube tabs open. So today I searched the Apple discussion forums for a fix to Safari using excessive memory...

...and I seem to have stumbled upon a workaround fixing my audio glitching issue. A post in a MacOS memory leak thread suggested that switching the MacOS appearance to "Light" mode instead of "Dark" or "Auto" would prevent MacOS from using swap memory so aggressively. My MBP M1 Max 32gb has been set to "Dark" mode since the day I bought it, so I switched to "Light" mode and...it worked! Safari still uses a silly amount of memory but it now uses the actual RAM pool first, rather than utilising swap memory so soon. I'm currently sitting at 28.3gb of memory used but only 1.38gb of swap used now that I'm in "Light" mode, compared to over 10gb of swap memory when I was in "Dark" mode, with the same session of Safari tabs open.

Now my audio is crystal clear with zero pops or glitches. It's not an ideal workaround - I much prefer "Dark" mode as I find it less fatiguing on the eyes but if it means my audio stays clean then tolerating "Light" mode is the lesser of two evils I guess.

Obviously, Apple still needs to fix this issue. There's no reason why switching between Dark and Light modes should have such a significant effect on MacOS memory allocation behaviour! It's a ridiculous workaround and shouldn't be necessary but here we are.

For anyone interested, here's the memory leak thread I'm referring to, and the helpful reply with the "Light" mode fix is by "Tyronne98" - Macbook M1 Pro 2021 memory leak - Apple Community

DON'T SEND IN YOUR DEVICES! It has nothing to do with hardware. It's a software issue. What you hear is rosetta not being able to keep up translating the audio-stream therefore loosing samples, which makes the clicking and pooping sound.

There are no solutions at the time being coming from apple. It has nothing to do with the hardware. It is an issue with rosetta, aggregate devices and/or buffering of the Audio.

There are some workarounds though. If you install any software core audio drivers (mixup audios' decibel, sonnox's listenhub or something similar) the problem goes away immediately and doesn't return when you set the sample rate buffers to a reasonable size. So unless you run nothing (not even one process) that needs rosetta, this problem will not occur anymore. Apple won't fix it and will hope complaints go away when in 2 or 3 years everything runs natively. It's a shame but that's how it's gonna be, I fear.

I am a professional audio engineer and read a lot about it in the apple dev forums, so if you dig deep enough you can find the causes and get a picture what's happening. Best solution if you need rosetta is using a third party core audio driver that buffers the audio after it is "created" by the os (grab's the zeroes and ones) and then hands it over to the speakers. This extra layer of calculation seems to introduce the necessary latency (slows the audio-stream down) so that rosetta can deal with it calculating it in "real-time".

Hi everybody,

(sorry in advance for my poor English. I'm French. Thx)

Here is what I found about this problem :

• Having "Intel app" opened creates the problem. So I'm not using any "Intel app" (except Boom 3D which doesn't create the problem). I deleted all "intel app" automatic launchers from Microsoft or Adobe that I found in my system.
• Having a lot of tabs opened in Safari or Chrome creates the problem right away. And in a painful frequency. It's worst when the tabs are Youtube tabs. Easy fix : I stopped opening 50 tabs at the same time :-D
• Using Photoshop creates the sound problem right away. Despite begin a "Universel app". I can create some crackling sounds at will with Photoshop :-D. When writing this message, I have some crackling sounds going every five minutes. ****! I forgot to close Photoshop. So I closed it and the problem was gone right away. The Photoshop problem is probably the only source of the crackling sound I cannot fix.

What I didn't work in my case :

• Changing the audio preferences as said in previous post didn't work for me
• Entering "sudo killall coreaudiod" in the Terminal cleans the problem if the sound problem persist after closing browser tabs or Photoshop. But it doesn't solve the overall problem.

My guess with all this : it's a memory problem in a way or another. The problem is linked to some apps and how they are used.

With all that said, I'm now a happy user of my M1 MacBook Pro.

I hope it will help.

I found a SOLUTION for the crackling on 16" 2021 M1 Macbook pros which might be the same case for many MANY people with the same model

It was not software related NOR hardware 'failure' but something very simple. This is linked to a slight flaw in the design, which is not really talked about.

PROBLEM: Crackling and popping on Right OR Left speaker during "bassy" sounds. Software updates and sample rate changes fix nothing.

Note: Generally, software issues will happen on both sides as the sound engine should be sending the same signal to all speakers.

Solution: Clean your the grills on the sides of the 16" M1 macbook pro & if necessary, the subwoofer.

How I came about this issue:

I bought an 2021 M1 16" only a few months ago because I heard of such great reviews and it was second hand (only used once by a company then packed up). I actually LOVE it.

To my dismay, the crackling and popping started and I was distraught after spending the money. Software updates and changing sample rate did absolutely nothing.

Thankfully I still had about a month of Apple Care left and so I sent it over to apple thinking the speakers had popped or something.

A week later, I get my M1 16" back with a note from the Apple Repair Centre stating that "Dirt was cleaned" as the "Fix" to my problem. That was surprising as it's not in a particularly dusty area.

But it worked and things played perfectly for a well with the audio... at least for a few months.

Then the crackling started again on my lower right speaker.

I figured it was the BASS speaker which is located on front right area of the 2021 M1 16" right where there is a grill.

Apple Care had ran out and I wasn't going to send this all the way back and pay for it to be "cleaned". So I decided to check how to (safely) remove the bottom case to check the bass speaker and got all the tools.

Low and behold, the right bass speaker had a couple tiny stones/grains of sand or debri. I brushed it gently off and used an air spray to dislodge any debri then closed the case.

The Crackling and Popping disappeared once more!

I do hope that in the newer models / future models that Apple address this flaw as this was overlooked in the design for sure.

The grill next to the bass speaker is wide open for any debri to drop in it. Once lodged in the subwoofer, you get a wonderful crackling from the vibration of the diaphragm. There are no filters or anything to stop small bits of dust of debri from slipping in - say you are working outside and wind blows something in or if your travel bag stores the laptop on it's side and debri falls in the unprotected grill.

Most laptops would some form of spongy filter - perhaps this was never thought of or ommitted to improve sound dispersal. Either way - it was a bad idea.

I hope this helps someone! If you have apple warranty, please send it in and don't open it. It's not worth voiding warranty unless it's out of it AND Apple will realise people are having this problem. It's an expensive piece of kit to have such a simple but annoying flaw.

I have a 2017 Macbook Pro. After getting the battery changed by the apple service center I started hearing popping sounds. It has been almost a year since the battery replacement and I find the popping sound really annoying now.

I just discovered that if I am not charging the Macbook pro there is no popping. It is a temporary solution, but at least I don't get to hear the popping sound. So make sure to unplug the charging cable after the Macbook is charged.

Hope this helps others. I will also test it and see if I don't hear popping once the charging cable is removed.

If I start up Quicktime and open a new audio recording window...the popping disappears. As soon as I shut Quicktime down, the popping starts again.

I'm wondering if there might be some IRQ channel issues when the system isn't prepping for audio recording. Just spitballing because Apple Inc. seems to be pretty mum on the matter.

This has been happening to me now for about two months. Happens the most when I have at least three apps open at once, one usually being Apple Music, but I've heard the pops come from message notifications and during Facetime calls too. No update has fixed it and I tried the Audio MIDI change from 48,000 Hz to 44,100 Hz and it didn't work. Seems like that's maybe made fewer pops than before. At its worse, it was producing 5 loud pops every few seconds.

Same problem here (MacBook Pro, 16-inch, 2021, M1 Pro, 16GB RAM).

I've tried all the listed fixes (swapping bitrate in Audio Midi etc.) and it just keeps happening. Pretty disappointing for a device that cost $3,000 and is meant to have industry-leading audio quality for a laptop.

Curious as to whether this can be fixed via a software update or if it's a hardware problem. Whatever it is, I'd really like to see it rectified, especially as I had my laptop for a few months before noticing as most of the time I use external speakers, so now it's too late to return it.

Any suggestions for new things to try are welcome.

I did what dan1829 did and I've been able to stream Apple Music while working in InDesign and Photoshop at the same time with no popping for about 30 minutes so far. Just yesterday it was doing about 15 pops a minute. Hopefully this works long-term.