Level 1

9 points

Audio stops working on macOS Sonoma

I've finally noticed a pattern that occurs rather frequently on macOS Sonoma. I was blaming Bluetooth issues before, but it looks like it's more about audio in general.

What happens is that at some point, all audio freezes. The hotkeys for the audio controls show "Stop" sign, like there are no audio outputs connected, the taskbar is completely unresponsive: Control Centre shows a spinning circle, the sidebar is not opening (Spotlight works, though).

If you go to the System Settings, some menu items will be unresponsive: Sound doesn't open, Bluetooth does not open, Accessibility and Siri & Spotlights all do not open.

Then, a new bug appeared that I've just started to notice recently. The screen is flashing like there's an Accessibility feature enabled that uses warning flash instead of sound. It appears just randomly, out of nowhere. Immediately after that, sound works just normally.

When this is happening, and video/audio content in the browser and wherever does not work, Tidal shows many random errors, and Firefox just completely hangs when you try to play a video on YouTube. I've tried to stop `coreaudiod` and it did restart the daemon, but nothing else happened.

The device is a very fresh M1 Max MacBook, and nothing like that was happening on Ventura. I've had audio cracks on another M1 Pro laptop, but this one didn't even have those.

P.S. This is happened just when I was writing this post, and I've disabled Bluetooth just before. Now, the Bluetooth section in the Settings is opening, but others are still unresponsive.

For reference - I have yabai and BetterSnapTool installed, which modify system behavior, but with system protection enabled. Siri is disabled. I've tried to stop a bunch of random processes when this happened, but none helped so far.

This issue constantly haunts me since I've upgraded, and it's extremely annoying.

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 14.0

Posted on Oct 18, 2023 4:06 PM

Best reply

Pillitamia

Level 1

14 points

Posted on Apr 9, 2024 3:12 AM

I read this on Reddit and it worked for me:

go to Terminal, type:

sudo killall coreaudiod

Hit enter.

Then add your password.

Hit enter.

Sound was restored on my MacBook Pro M1 after installing Sonoma (worst mistake of my life).

I hope it helps.

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27 replies

dantaeusb1 Author

Level 1

9 points

Oct 24, 2023 3:18 AM in response to dantaeusb1

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.

dantaeusb1 Author

Level 1

9 points

Oct 27, 2023 9:58 AM in response to dantaeusb1

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?

Nov 17, 2023 12:34 AM in response to dantaeusb1

Exactly the same on my computer, 14.1.1 since yesterday, no change. I don't want to install beta, I need stability on machine I'm earning money on.

I've bought Airpods Pro to get rid of manual headphones switch between iPad, iPhone and Mac during workday, Teams calls etc. and now I have more problems than benefits.

As a Mac OS user since 10.4 Tiger and G4 CPUs and I can't remember anything more problematic than this issue.

chdsl

Level 2

372 points

Nov 17, 2023 1:25 AM in response to michaldudkowski

michaldudkowski wrote:

As a Mac OS user since 10.4 Tiger and G4 CPUs and I can't remember anything more problematic than this issue.

Do you mean you are having problems with the new macOS, or the problems with your M chip Mac? Or, both?

It is interesting to know, as I am using an Intel MBP 2018 model, but it doesn't have any problems of this sort with Sonoma 14.1.1.

chdsl

Level 2

372 points

Nov 17, 2023 1:36 AM in response to michaldudkowski

I use Redmi Buds 3 Pro, when I'm not supposed to disturb others, and the Bluetooth connection never failed. Even, the Chinese 10 Euro no-name external Bluetooth keyboard never gets disconnected. Maybe, it is the M chip that troubles your computer?

dantaeusb1 Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 18, 2023 6:29 AM in response to chdsl

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.

Nov 22, 2023 12:46 AM in response to dantaeusb1

Since 14.1.1 it's a little bit better, I still have issues with connection but no freezing on taskbar and I can switch between devices, also no crashes of Discord or MS Teams. But when I disconnect AirPods internal speakers randomly mutes itself if there's no sound for a while.

So now it's better, not annoying, but still not perfect.

Dec 1, 2023 6:06 AM in response to dantaeusb1

I too have this problem on my MacBook Pro M2 Pro since upgrading to macOS Sonoma. It mainly occurs with AirPods Pro 2 but I have also had this happen to me using OnePlus Buds.

The blockages are the same as you have experienced and, as I often work in video conferences, blocking MS Teams or Google Meet is really becoming a serious problem.

[Edited by Moderator]

Dec 19, 2023 3:00 PM in response to dantaeusb1

I did not solve it with Sonoma 14.2. The problems are less frequent but are there nonetheless. Fast switching between iPhone and Mac of the AirPods Pro 2 often goes haywire and audio devices disappear in my 14" MacBook Pro (M2 Pro) exactly as before, with no screen flash effect.

We are close to a solution but it still doesn't work as it should. I regret the manual connection of macOS Ventura.

Dec 20, 2023 2:03 AM in response to dantaeusb1

Suddenly I have no longer these issues, airpods are connecting and disconnecting as expected, it's ok for about a week. What changed? I changed Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse to Logitech MX devices. I don't remember if I had any system updates, it's still Sonoma 14.2 (23C64). But maybe AirPods software was automatically updated?

dantaeusb1 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jan 22, 2024 6:52 AM in response to dantaeusb1

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.

May 3, 2024 1:03 AM in response to Pillitamia

Doing a sudo killall coreaudiod works for me too. Also doing the same in Activity Monitor works as well.

Audio stops working on macOS Sonoma