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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Posted on Jul 26, 2022 6:36 AM

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".

226 replies

Mar 28, 2023 6:52 AM in response to DaanTwice

I've been running the Console app for a few hours now, looking at Errors and Faults when the popping sound occurs. I'm pretty sure I've found what the problem is.


The bluetoothd process reports the following exactly 12 times, each time I hear the popping sound.

A2DP packet flushed: L2CAP (chip) flush occured. Current sequence=22109, timestamp=4132734

This tells me that it's actually a bluetooth driver issue, not a core audio driver issue.


I see these logs posted 12 times without fail. If it's flushing packets, I can only assume it's not sending them for this short time period.


[Link Edited by Moderator]


Jul 15, 2024 10:03 PM in response to Tommy8850

For what it's worth, I solved my issue. Loud popping and crackling noises occurred every time I was listening to Spotify. Youtube seemed fine whatsoever.


Now, I went to the settings section of Spotify and noticed the cache was sitting at 2.7GB. After clearing cache from inside the app settings, it seems to have stopped. I'm now 2 hours in and have yet to hear a pop.


Bonkers if you'd ask me..

Apr 5, 2022 2:56 PM in response to NoteScribe

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


May 5, 2022 1:24 PM in response to itsjimmy

I tried changing the bitrate in the midi settings. It seemed to fix it for a time, but it came back and there were issues with surround sound audio playback on movies. Put it back to 48khz fixed that issue. Then I tried deleting those files, but it eventually came back. I have ended up using this:


sudo launchctl stop com.apple.audio.coreaudiod 


when I start hearing the pops. This restarts the core audio daemon which has the side effect of tossing and recreating those preferences files and avoiding the restart. Try that...

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?

Oct 28, 2022 5:00 PM in response to forenheith

Oh, I had problems. I was going to try to help them track it down but after updating it went away. Mine definitely sounded like an audio buffer glitch. A bit like a stuttering and 'pop' type sound. Truly horrible for a platform that is relied on by audio engineers, DJs, etc.


I tried the fixes that people posted, such as changing sample rate but that didn't work. I'm on MacBook Pro 14" M1 16gb.

Oct 2, 2024 10:37 AM in response to Tommy8850

I don't know why this works, but it does. Try disabling Siri. It worked for me. I even turned Siri back on and the popping didn't come back. We will see if over time it comes back. I also closed Ableton Live which was running in the background but particularly the popping went away when I shut off Siri. Perhaps Siri is occupying too much memory. I am not sure. We will see.

Oct 2, 2024 10:38 AM in response to Tommy8850

I don't know why this works, but it does. Try disabling Siri. It worked for me. I even turned Siri back on and the popping didn't come back. We will see if over time it comes back. I also closed Ableton Live which was running in the background, but particularly the popping went away when I shut off Siri. Perhaps Siri is occupying too much memory. I am not sure. We will see.

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Macbook pro 16" M1 pro 2021 popping sound OS 12.0.1

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