Macbook pro 16" M1 pro 2021 popping sound OS 12.0.1

Yes, I too have a MBP 16 with popping and crackling noises?!? The entire purpose for me paying for the larger MBP was for the sound at the showroom. intermittently happens while playing various sources: YouTube, pandora, Apple Music, Hulu, zoom calls! yikes. did I err in buying this machine?

I'll try updating the OS and report what happened.

Good afternoon!

A similar problem on the macbook pro 14 m1. In the beginning, I did not notice any extraneous sounds, after 2-3 weeks, crackling began. Sometimes very rarely, sometimes every few seconds, which is very annoying. It's a pity that there is such an annoying sore in laptops for such money. This is a pro product for work, but it does not work comfortably.

Before that, there was a macbook air m1, there was nothing like that.

I tried the plist "fix" and, as expected, it worked for a while, but the popping always comes back - it's like it's on a timer.

Another maddening data point: yesterday, I forgot to switch an audio setting in Studio One, and sound was briefly coming from my little-used desktop speakers. Shockingly, the sound was clean - no pops. So I switched the setting back to my audio interface w/headphones - still popping like crazy. Unplugged the headphones from the interface and plugged them into the headphone jack on my speakers - audio still clean! It's a miracle!

I started to ponder how to test with my second desk setup, since switching to my speakers hadn't helped there, and got up this morning looking forward to doing some testing, but decided to re-check my main setup first, and guess what happened? Headphones plugged into my speakers now pop and crackle too! So, something in the audio system was somehow reset by routing to the speakers instead of the audio interface, but given time, the issue eventually "infected" that output, too.

Can't believe I dropped $3300US on this laptop and have to deal with such a basic issue!

[Edited by Moderator]

Received this from Apple:

We believe we've identified the issue and we have a fix in place. Once thee released build is available we'll ask you to verify that the issue has been resolved.

Fingers crossed a fix is coming soon...

Fwiw, it seems to be an Apple Silicon problem only (and not related to new OS releases). I just bought a refurbished Intel Mac and with the same installation as my M1 Mac I've not experienced any glitching.

My issue didn't start until after I'd updated to 12.4, so that's not a sure fix. Also, someone else just found out that you can't mention running non-general-release versions of macOS, even if they're public, so for anyone who is contemplating that, I don't think it will help.

Does your refurb have a T2 chip? I saw some speculation from a musician that experienced a similar issue that seemed to be triggered by a security update on a T2-equipped Intel Mac, which does point toward something Apple Silicon-related.

I had the same problem. I tried everything but it didn't work for me but I recently made a change that clearly worked for me at the moment.

Go to Midi Setup -> Macbook Pro Speakers and then change the Format 48Hz field to 44Hz. After a few minutes I changed it back to 46Hz and I don't know what happened but it was solved.

I have also been having this same issue with my 16in MBP since I got it about 6 months ago. It happens with the internal speakers, a Rhode external USB mic with analog audio out, as well as my Bluetooth headphones. It happens in every app that I use with audio including Adobe Audition, Quicktime, Safari, Youtube, Premier Pro, Zoom. The problem is solved after restarting, and it comes back after the machine has not been restarted it might be a day or more don't keep track. It gets worse the longer it is left on until I get annoyed enough and restart then it is fixed for a while. Since I do a lot of Audio work on my mac this is a huge issue and needs to be fixed. I also notice that this sometimes corresponds with a slowing down of the machine with jumps in frame rate and lag for saving and switching apps etc...

At first, I updated my MBP16's software and it worked for about 4 days. Then, the problem returned.

Hey APPLE: this is bullsh#t. Like Jayzonhe3 and many of us who bought this computer for audio characteristics, this has to be addressed. UNACCEPTABLE Apple. This is your flagship guys.

What fixed this for me, was to not use Firefox to play my music. After I switched to Safari, I worked for 1 hour, no noices at all! In Firefox it was nearly constant when making adjustments to photos/saving/opening.

Turning off Hardware Acceleration in Firefox also seems to help, but still has some noises going on, unlike Safari that so far is 100% 'pop' free!

Hope this helps more people.

Niels

This happens specifically with aggregate audio devices and when such an aggregate is uses it has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with CPU load. I am on a MacBook Pro (16", 2021) with MacOS 12.4 installed and the problem hasn't been addressed in any of the recent updates. It must have to to with Core Audio, Buffers, anything like that.

Funny thing is: As soon as I use a third party rapper like decibel from premix or Sonnox's Listenhub or Sonarworks Sound ID the problem is gone immediately. So it must be that if a Software "grabs" the zeroes and ones that represent the audio-stream before it goes out to the hardware this introduces a latency or a buffer that then "repairs" the audio-stream to the hardware outputs (your speakers or D/A Converters). That's why all major DAWs don't show the problem. because they have delay-compensation built in (which is also a buffer). So I cannot use Spotify, the magenta-tv app, the brave browser without also routing the audio through one of those 3rd party applications. Hope apple will fix this soon because it is more than annoying. It's close to a downright fraud to sell machines that go for quite a price and are praised as the cream of the crop state of the art that then are not able to output proper audio. I know that apple maybe is working hard on those issues but I reported my observations many times but apple doesn't reach out. I am an audio engineer and could maybe help, but unless there is a way to get contact to apple I am just a customer that just has to deal with annoying workarounds, that also sometimes do not work for all necessary tanks.

DAWs do show the problem for me - I've been experiencing it across Logic Pro X, Studio One 5, and Reason. Thankfully, the problem has mysteriously improved for me in the past week - not sure if I just hit on a magic combination of things, but the pops are now pretty rare, but I still get one occasionally.

A pending release of MacOS 12.5 is supposed to contain a fix. If one is following MacOS release news, one could potentially acquire the fix today. I'd be more specific but the forum has rules that keep causing my post to get removed.

I had a big problem with this until Mac OS 12.4. Now it almost never happens. The only time it has is when watching a video and plugging in an external monitor. During all the window and display reorganizing it does it popped a couple of times. Apart from that it hasn't happened, whereas before 12.4 it would happen every few minutes.