Macbook pro 16" M1 pro 2021 popping sound OS 12.0.1

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.

Same issue here, and it really surprised me. All aspects of this machine is great, the sound of the speakers is the best I've ever heard on a laptop, and then this stuff happens…

Chiming in to add to the evidence that – while this seems to worsen with CPU load – I have had several pops (and one is one too many!) with only a handful of apps open, such as a couple of text editors, a browser, and over 81% of resources available. When this first appeared, I had 63% available and audio could severely pop every 10-20 seconds. Which is inexcusable. I have never had this happen apart from manually switching / pushing the latency and I/O buffer in apps such as Ableton Live.

Closing nearly all apps seems to resolve the issue. But I have also simultaneously opened all the most complex apps (Logic, Ableton, Final Cut, the whole Office Suite, the whole Apple productivity suite (in the blink of an eye) with no pops, so it is not directly a CPU thing. Later I tried playing 3x 4k video streams. This produced no popping… for a minute. And then it suddenly pops. Both on Apple Music and Spotify. Sampling frequency was set to 44,1khz.

Really needs to be addressed.

The OS keeps creating these files which I think are the source of the issue, I could use some script to delete them on startup if found but I don't want to mess with it. Seems like the next version will come with the fix, but until then I'm gonna have to stay with the pops and breaks on the speaker ve tas always end up messing with my libraries

The question to the attentive Apple support team is, how many oblivion users just sent the laptop for service? And how much time are your employees spending on opening macs ;)

Since updating to Mac OS Monterey Version 12.3.1 (21E258) I haven't had any pops.

I also tried the previously mentioned suggestions (deleting files etc.) but those didn't seem to do the trick, only the update solved the issue.

Switching the output format down to 44khz seems to have fixed the issue for me too. Fingers crossed!

My previous Macbook pro (2016) had similar issues - only far worse, so it's been a solid 6 years of high priced hardware with unusable built in audio... Hopefully no more :D

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...

I would say Class Action Size. It's outrageous. The amount of boasting Apple does about the quality of their new Macbookpro speakers only to have them pop at every turn. The company has made no effort to address it.

I'm looking to contact some of the Apple media sites.

I'm experiencing the popping/crackling sound on the Macbook Pro (16-inch, 2021) which I just purchased recently (April 2022) which is disappointing given this is my first Mac purchase after previously owning a Macbook Pro (Mid 2012) which had been pretty much flawless since I bought it.

It would be interesting to hear from other people which specific applications or platforms this is happening on. I've tried a couple of suggestions that people have mentioned here such as changing the audio frequency and deleting the coreaudio plist. None have worked so far but I have noticed that the popping/crackling sounds only seem to happen when I'm playing YouTube videos. As a contrast, if I'm playing content from most streaming services, it doesn't happen. I am using FireFox 99.0.1 (64-bit) to watch this content. Does this only happen when watching/playing content through web browsers?

After reading this thread, I feel like there hasn't been a great deal of concern or effort on Apple's part to fix this issue; especially given this device is a "Pro" device and people are probably using it for high end audio applications. With that said, it shouldn't be crackling or popping even if it's a consumer level device. There's definitely something wrong here.

None of the tips I've found so far have made a lasting difference for me. Changing the MIDI to 44,100 Hz, 48,000 Hz, or even 96,000 Hz didn't help. Deleting the plist files seems to help in that you reboot afterward but the problem came back within a day. Rebooting seems to be the only thing that fixes it but that only lasts a short time. The problem always returns anywhere from a few minutes to at most a few hours.

I opened a ticket back in Feb on this and provided ArTraces and Device Diagnostics half a dozen times. I haven't received any response since March 10th. The ticket has a recent similar reports listed as less than 10 which based on this post seems really low to me:

Maybe if enough of us open a ticket in the Feedback Assistant something will get done?

[Link Edited by Moderator]

I originally had links to Reddit posts but since those apparently violate some rule, please go to reddit and search for:

MacBook Pro 16 2021 audio crackling issue

MacBook Pro speakers crackling and popping

Look for u/[deleted] with 371 comments and 191 upvotes or u/DailyDoseOfHighlight with 56 comments and 39 upvotes. But really any of the dozens of posts would work since they have the same information about changing MIDI and deleting plist files.

New MacBook m1pro 16”. Having this issue too with all various midi format settings.

Definitely not a fun surprise with an expensive machine that advertises great quality sound. I’ve never had this with a MacBook before including previous MacBook Pro (intel) and M1 air.

This is a very old issue that has been around for 5 years at least.

One surefire way to trigger it is to open the iPhone simulator from Xcode, leave it running for awhile, and then try making a Zoom video call. The sound will start to crackle like crazy after you've been talking for 5 minutes.