Audio stops working on macOS Sonoma

Upgraded today (Sonoma 14.2, major version did not change), got no crashes for over 10 hours so far, which is quite impressive. Plugged/unplugged headphones, toggled the Bluetooth headphones, made a couple of calls _with changing input/output during calls_, the usual scenarios that were leading to crashes and sound lags are now gone. For anyone having troubles with Sound/Bluetooth, I recommend checking for an update.

Continuing observation!

I think I accidentally found a fix in a GitHub Gist that is 11 years old: https://gist.github.com/1951FDG/c427d318165e81e358c3. I've checked, and I've applied it on 15th of January, exactly the time of the last crash. No crashes since then.

What I did is just (APPLY AT YOUR OWN RISK! – I am not 100% sure I understand what exactly it does) copy-pasted this into the terminal:

```

sudo rm -rf /Library/Preferences/Audio/com.apple.audio.SystemSettings.plist

sudo rm -rf /Library/Preferences/Audio/com.apple.audio.DeviceSettings.plist

sudo rm -rv /Library/Preferences/com.apple.audio.DeviceSettings.plist

sudo rm -rv /Library/Preferences/com.apple.audio.SystemSettings.plist

sudo rm -rv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.audio.AudioMIDISetup.plist

sudo rm -rv ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.MIDI.0016174ee065.plist

sudo rm -rv ~/Library/Audio/MIDI Configurations/Default.mcfgsudo

launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist

```

Can't say what happens here, other than forcefully deletes a bunch of system configuration files for the audio subsystem, which seems to be re-created correctly on `coreaudiod` startup – not even a reboot is needed. With the "fresh" configuration, no errors are occurring anymore. I wonder if that's some particular device/update that causes these files to get corrupted and cause crashes, but it looks like that's the case.

Just accidentally looked at the Console App while looking for logs for other things, and found out that my `codeaudiod` crashing by cooldown every day 10 to 50 times with intervals from 1 second to a couple of hours, around 5 minutes on average. The crash is the following:

```

Crashed Thread: 18 Dispatch queue: com.apple.audio.device.~:AMS2_StackedOutput:0.event

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)

Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000000

```

I also found that `avconferenced` fails too occasionally, though very rare - I believe that's the process that connects iPad as a second screen, and it _too fails with sigsegv on 0x0 - though not that it's some unique bug to attempt to read memory at 0, maybe just a coincidence. @Flomaster do you use Sidecar by chance?

It is likely. While playing Raft with Wine, I've noticed that M1 Max does absolutely the same thing that M1 Pro does - this weird choppy short crack/pop sound out of the internal speakers when under load. But while on another M1 Pro (Ventura, didn't update) sound continues playing as usual, just with periodic cracks, on M1 Max (Sonoma) it completely crashes after that.

I was thinking that it was the flaw of my model, but both of the computers do the same thing - they're bought in different countries, absolutely different models. It seems like that Max just have enough horsepower (let's be honest, the RAM is a problem, they're both ridiculously overpowered) for that sound issue to be rare, but sound on M1 is fundamentally broken, with macOS Sonoma breaking things even further - on Ventura sound at least was continuing playing.

Found this sound issue on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePFZAyurElU&ab_channel=JoeL for the reference. Author said that reinstalling macOS helps, maybe if it fixes the pops it will fix the crash too - until the next OS update.

Something's certainly very, very wrong with macOS Sonoma. As uptime keeps growing, the computer becomes practically unusable. `coreaudiod` and `avconferenced` segfault every minute, top bar is completely unresponsive and could stay that way for 15–30 minutes, once I found that watch was 30 minutes behind due to failing coreaudio. Now it gets completely disastrous later, as I've stopped used any audio on laptop and got about 1.5 weeks of uptime - the video memory gets corrupted seems like, I've got all apps turned into jigsaw puzzle (n.b. - I've removed personal information). I wonder if it has to do with the fact that I've connected iPad again.

I'd run memtest but I'm not sure if it works on M1. But I don't really think it's about hardware, as it really is deteriorating over time and there are a ton of software errors in logs.

Updated to Mac 14.1.1, and updated iPad too just in case. Observing.

Apologies for the false alarm, 14.2 is still pretty horrible. Recently found out that my colleague with a fresh M3 Mac has this problem too, which is just ridiculous. It's been 5 months with constant crashes of the system driver on one of the most important features and Apple can't fix that.

4 coreaudiod crashes during a 15-minute meeting. Just next level. Also, a small detail I've noticed – in the settings, which now thankfully do not crash, the "MacBook Pro Speakers" and "External Headphones" turn into "Unknown" for a short while.

The error itself is not changed at all – same segfaults

Crashed Thread: 8 Dispatch queue: com.apple.audio.device.~:AMS2_StackedOutput:0.event

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)

Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000000

Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000000000000

Yes, I'm thinking it's a combination of Bluetooth and audio issues. I've got all apps that are trying to use audio crashing after I'm just connecting my Bluetooth earbuds.

Now I see that the `coreaudiod` is just not running this time - I've tried to connect to a Slack Huddle, and it just hanged, sound is unresponsive again and the Settings app is not working as I mentioned before.

I've checked the Activity Monitor and found that the process that works with audio on macOS (`coreaudiod`) is not running. I've attempted to launch `coreaudiod` with `sudo launchctl load /system/library/launchdaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plis`, and got `Load failed: 5: Input/output error` as a response.

After a while, when I disabled the earbuds it's started again on its own and `coreaudiod` is running, and the audio controls are working once more.