Macbook pro 16" M1 pro 2021 popping sound OS 12.0.1

Hi, I just got my Macbook pro 16" M1 pro 2021 over a month. It is on OS v12.0.1. It is a great machine. But it developed some popping sound today. I played some Spanish guitar music for around 1.5 hours (not at the highest volume) then it randomly developed some popping sound on the right side speaker. When I lift the mac and tile to the right to listen closely, the popping sound is getting worse and constant, especially at the high pitch. When I put it down the popping sound still existing but less even when I put the volume to 4 bars. Apple support suggested to upgrade to OS to12.1. After upgrade the popping sound is gone, even at the highest volume. Is it possible that the OS upgrade fix the issue? (i.e. limited the frequency range?).


I see some discussion that the popping sound comes when cpu /memory is high. In my case, I only open the apple music nothing else.


Has anyone see the same issue?

Thanks

Posted on Jan 3, 2022 2:16 PM

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207 replies

Jul 29, 2022 6:40 AM in response to derek stanton

I named a few in my reply. Google helps: But here you are some links:


https://process.audio/de/products/decibel

https://www.sonnox.com/news/new-sonnox-toolbox-listenhub

https://www.globaldelight.com/boom/


I cannot believe this situation, too. But it being a software problem I think that a switch to another processor architecture can bring up such bugs. Anyway what I do not understand is that this should have occurred in beta testing and should be a known issue. But there is silence from apple about this. Also, when it is realtively easy to mostly eliminate the problem by using a software driver "between" the software playback stream and the hardware outputs then why does apple not build that ability into core-audio or rosetta or wherever in the stream a tiny buffer seems to be neccessary. It would still be a workaround I suppose, but it could be communicated and used until one's OS works without any software that relies on rosetta. I also wrote to all audio product manufacturers that are important to me to please not sleep on the issue of translating their products to the apple native architecture, because some manufacturers consider to not upgrade "older" stuff like hardware drivers, interface software or VST Plugins. We need to get off rosetta as quickly as possible, but I feel some manufacturers struggle with providing updates as quickly as we would wish for.

I still hope apple can and will do something about it. In the dev-forums the talk goes that they know about this (how would they not) and might be able to provide a fix. But in the meantime we are at 11.5 so 5 updates did not fix the issue.

So my observations again:

The cause of the issue is rosetta. As long as ANY (even just ONE) process is active using rosetta it occurs.

The problem worsens immensely when using aggregated devices.

The wrappers (third party software core-audio-drivers) help a lot, but might not be perfect and might need to be reset from time to time (meaning that it might be necessary to manually reset the buffer size like once every 3-4 hours) depending on the task and load (throughput) that the driver has to handle.

Another Observation:

Those crackles occur especially on Youtube (or any other "thing" that comes out of a browser. It is ridiculously present in Spotify, but it. doesn't occur with iTunes/Music. So there seems to be some software that gets affected by this more and other software that isn't affected at all.

I never had any problem with crackling once I work in my DAW's (Cubase, mainly). Those are Applications that introduce a buffer themselves because they have to to be a able to handle the processing they apply to the audiostream) So this way rosetta also seems to have enough time to do it's translation for the processors to calculate and the audio stream passes through all soft and hardware stages without loosing samples. If crackling occurs (which also happens and always has, when the sample buffer size is set to small for the system to handle the processing) you just set a higher sample rate buffer size and things are fine again.

So I hope this helps y'all to understand and workaround. Pity we have to.

cheers,

Stefan

Jul 31, 2022 12:44 PM in response to Tommy8850

I've had the exact same issue on my 14" M1 Pro 2021. I spent about a hour today discussing this with Apple Support, and the representative was "100% certain this is a hardware, not software issue." However, I brought my MacBook into a Genius Bar last week, and after running full diagnostics, they concluded my speakers were working "100% fine." So they said it could be a software issue. I've managed to capture the issue in this video I've just posted today.


I will point out that after updating MacOS to 15.2 yesterday, I've not heard the popping since--at least so far. Has anyone else tried upgrading to 15.2? Does that fix it for you too?

Aug 1, 2022 7:44 PM in response to Shannon Routley

Just wanted to chime in on this again. I have been able to repeat the instance when I have Chrome and Safari open at the same time. When the audio glitch starts, it can be aggravating and jarring. Another poster mentioned it is related to an audio buffer related issue. Having used audio recording software before, I can say the sound of this 'glitch' very much sounds like a buffer issue.


However, I can consistently get the issue to go away by closing Chrome, and watching YouTube on Safari.

Aug 5, 2022 10:05 AM in response to Tommy8850

Also crackling sound on a Macbook Pro 16 M1 Pro 16 GB Ram (1 TB SSD) - in a lot of different apps.


Apple! - Is this a out of season april fool joke?


3.500 $ MacBookPro for media production and it fails on sound playback. WTF! Are you kidding me?


Sound playback should be a solved problem since years. Mac was always THE music production machine. The solid workhorse with minimum latency in most DAWs. It's a shame in software quality and no fix since months ... i'm speechless ...


Aug 6, 2022 2:54 PM in response to Shannon Routley

Hey again,


Was able to fix the issue by upgrading the memory (RAM), actually had to get a new MacBook Pro for that.


What happens when I used Chrome with multiple tabs opened, is the average memory pressure load.

You can check yours by lunching Activity Monitor and looking at the Memory tab. Mine was yellow color with rare red spikes.


What's more interesting is that the sound issues (clicking and popping) even happened on AirPods Pro when connected to the MacBook.


Aug 12, 2022 11:35 AM in response to Tommy8850

I have this same issue. Got the mac yesterday. Same model (Macbook pro 16" M1 pro 2021) and Monterey 12.5...

Sounds like a record playing skipping! I notice it pops when I initiate a intensive task, such as clicking a blur filter in lightroom, or moving and placing an image in photoshop: a record skipping pop interrupts whatever I am listening too.

The speakers are so awesome, I hope they figure this out 😬


I am going to watch activity monitor see if I can corroborate what @pardise pete is saying about swap pop!!!

#swappopgate

Aug 16, 2022 8:34 AM in response to twofingerrightclick_

Indeed it appears to be swap pop, and changing the sample rate from 48,000 to 44,100 fixed the issue. No more pops. Not the biggest inconvenience as i am no audio producer.

Seems like an electrical issue, seems hard to fix with software. We'll see. I have found macbooks to be very electrically sensitive. Like if I use and unshielded usb cable the track pad will stop working or the wifi will cut out... Things that don't happen with my other laptops. Not a big deal again, just have to always make sure your gear is compatible.

Aug 16, 2022 12:08 PM in response to MZiegler-Aut

I am still getting this issue intermittently. I would be livid if I were still working on audio production, Djing etc, as this would be a dealbreaker. This 'fix' I posted above still works, but I have still run into the odd audio pop with Safari with other applications open such as DaVinci Resolve. Some really odd conflict must be going on. The Apple's internal DAC should be able to be set in priority exclusive mode to override any other application settings.

Macbook pro 16" M1 pro 2021 popping sound OS 12.0.1

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