Terrible Music sound - M1 laptop, bluetooth headphones (Pro Max), Zoom and Teams

Not really a question, but something I've discovered.

Randomly my M1 MBA would develop terrible (quiet, crackling, unlistenable) sound when listening to Music app via bluetooth headphones (Pro Max in my case).

(Headphones are fine, they work as expected (read - gloriously) with iPhone and iPad.)

I've discovered that it seems that quitting Zoom and changing Teams notification style from "Teams built-in" to "Mac" seems to correct the sound issue. (Teams: 3 dots, Settings, Notifications, Notification style)

I wonder if these apps set up their own connection to the headphones, and that somehow messes with other apps.

Hope this helps others.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.1

Posted on Feb 17, 2022 7:00 AM

Top-ranking reply

tmoldovan Author

Level 1

22 points

Posted on Feb 18, 2022 2:44 PM

Ah, and now after a couple of months of troubleshooting the issue on my own, I see that Apple has a support page and an explanation for what’s happening: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208896

It is indeed the apps which use the bluetooth microphone that affect the quality of listening.

I’ve switched my 3 videoconferencing apps to use the built in MBA microphone rather than the AirPods microphone.

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Terrible Music sound - M1 laptop, bluetooth headphones (Pro Max), Zoom and Teams

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