Level 1

39 points

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

Top-ranking reply

Singervienna

Level 1

8 points

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".

View in context

Similar questions

226 replies

lank699

Level 1

8 points

Mar 7, 2023 8:49 AM in response to alvaromv

I have recently updated to Ventura 13.2.1 and the popping has reduced significantly. It does still happen when the cpu and ram are stressed. When it’s not doing much, I basically don’t hear it. It has made my m1 Mac Pro at least usable again

VAGeek83

Level 1

8 points

Sep 16, 2024 10:03 AM in response to Tommy8850

I have a Macbook pro 16" M1 pro 2021 I purchased used almost a year ago, no occurances of this issue until yesterday. I tried the plist delete, clear Trash, etc, and that worked for a while but back again. The issue happens even at boot time when the OS first starts to load, which made it look like a hardware issue but being effected by plist files points to OS/software.

Also interesting, I just saw the 48,1 to 44,1 fix mentioned above, mine was already at 44,1 and putting it to 48,1 seems to have fixed it. ??? Time will tell.

Feb 9, 2022 12:42 PM in response to Sitti_S

Oddly I was set at 44 with crackle changed to 48 and has not appeared

Apr 10, 2022 3:38 PM in response to AlbertVisionX

Sign as as a developer, apply the latest ve ta. It worked for me. I counted 13 “cracks” in a 2 minutes song. Now only 1.

Apr 17, 2022 3:21 PM in response to Messi4ever

updating to ve ta and dan1829 solution works perfectly! Thanks

superbam

Level 1

4 points

Jul 28, 2022 11:58 AM in response to derek stanton

I’ve been on MacOS 12.5 for a bit now and seems to have resolved the issue. Anyone else see an improvement with 12.5?

Guy1992

Level 1

5 points

Mar 16, 2023 12:54 PM in response to Tommy8850

Changed my format from 48 to 44 and fixed the problem.

Thanks!

Mar 26, 2023 12:07 AM in response to Tommy8850

Solved!! Install eqMac, it was built to solve this issue! Find it on github or at eqmac.app. This took me two years to find ; ;

HemiDave

Level 1

8 points

Nov 15, 2023 7:20 AM in response to Sitti_S

Going to Audio Midi and changing from 48,1 to 44,1 and then a reboot, seemed to have worked for me too. Thanks for the fix.

Tommy8850 Author

Level 1

39 points

Jan 3, 2022 4:08 PM in response to Ana MacDonald

Hi Ana, Thanks for you reply.

After I upgrade to 12.1, now it still happen but only when I play at the highest volume on guitar music and at high pitch only but it is fine when play piano or vocal song even at highest volume, where in 12.0.1 it happened on any sounds even at low volume. I know that even on the HI-FI system the guitar music is quite demanding and require quick twitter response. May be software upgrade did help on eliminating the most of the case, only happen when play challenging music?

I will keep eyes on this.

Thanks

Tommy8850 Author

Level 1

39 points

Jan 24, 2022 2:36 PM in response to Michael2009

For me , it is hardware issue and sent in for fix. It has passed 30 day after purchase, thus it doesn't have the replacement option. Which is really disappointment. It is only over a month to have a replacement parts for an expansive Machine.

Apr 1, 2022 11:41 AM in response to GerardoZZ

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.

Apr 1, 2022 2:27 PM in response to Tommy8850

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.

shorts

Level 2

475 points

May 6, 2022 3:13 AM in response to Tommy8850

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.

May 16, 2022 6:22 AM in response to Tommy8850

Hello All,

Got the Same issue ! The sound cracking when I play the song from different sources...

I change the frequency but the same problem... I think it's a software problem because I haven't got this problem before the last update :/

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Macbook pro 16" M1 pro 2021 popping sound OS 12.0.1