Macbook Pro Speakers Go Muffled When Volume reaches A Certain Level When Audio Plays.

Question

Macbook Pro Speakers Go Muffled When Volume reaches A Certain Level When Audio Plays.

Hello,

I have a 15 inch, 2017 Macbook Pro with the Touch Bar.

I've been having this issue for quite a long time now. When I'm using the built in speakers and playing a film, youtube video, spotify or any app with sound and the volume reaches a certain point. The sound suddenly sounds like it's clipping and then goes very muffled.

The only way I can fix it at the minute is by plugging in some headphones into the 3.5mm headphone jack and taking them out again or force quitting cordaudiod in the activity monitor.

I've tried reseting the macbook back to factory default and starting again and the problem is still there, there is nothing plugged into the macbook and there is no case on it.

If someone could help I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 13.6

Posted on Nov 13, 2023 6:48 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

85,366 points

Nov 13, 2023 6:57 AM in response to MatthewCourt92

At this point, the fact you say it is "muffled" sounds to me that there is something mechanically wrong with the speakers. Do you find the issue happens when you plug in headphones? If it doesn't then the blame is squarely on the speakers. If it does happen with RCA headphones, then you know the audio chip on the logicboard is doing it.

The Audio MiDI setup utility may yield a clue as to what this is happening. It is in your Applications -> Utilities folder. Any audio bitrate higher than 16 bit 44.1kHz is really designed only for 3+ channel sound. When the Mac OS is updated Apple sometimes it gets altered without your knowledge.

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Answer 2

Nov 13, 2023 7:32 AM in response to a brody

Thanks for the reply.

Everything is fine with headphones so I think you're right about the speakers.

I opened Audio MIDI and made sure the sample rate is set to 44.1kHz but it says 2 ch 24-bit which is obviously higher than what you said but I don't think there's a way of changing the bit rate to 16 bit.

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Macbook Pro Speakers Go Muffled When Volume reaches A Certain Level When Audio Plays.

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