2013 Macbook Air Sound Issues

The tech at the service center recommended updating Mavericks, which he did. If the problem persists, the computer is off to Apple to replace the main logic board. If your computer is still under warranty, you might want to do the same.

I am not impressed. I've had my Macbook Air for FOUR days. That's right, 4 days.

And I've already experienced the black screen sleep crap and now my sound disappeared out of nowhere.

I didn't close the lid on my computer. I was watching netflix, paused it to chat a little with a friend, after a little while I wanted to listen to some music. Pressed play on spotify and nothing.

I hadn't put my computer to sleep, I kept using it and the sound disappeared.

I have my bluetooth off. I have the latest version of Mavericks and I've even had to do one PRAM reset a couple of days ago.

So what's the issue?

Should I take the computer in and demand a new one?

Getting the new one might solve your sound problem. However, the black screen problem will exist in the new one too. Apple is not fixing the hardware issue that causes the black screen but instead have installed a workaround in the upcoming OSX 10.9.2. Once you get to install that, you won't see the black screen.

Btw, before you do anything, please ensure you have all the current OSX updates installed. This is because if I remember right, this random(especially if you have VLC player, a.k.a 3rd party codecs installed) dissapearance of sound was a bug in OSX 10.9, which got fixed in 10.9.1. If you still have the sound issue after installing all the updates so far, I would suggest that you go ahead and use your warranty and have them replace it.

In addition, the folks at apple support will ask you to do an SMC reset too in addition to the PRAM. That along with PRAM reset is apparantly the first aid of any issue for them 🙂

I still have this problem too. It started for me on Mountain Lion. It was actually sitting right in front of me playing sound when the sound suddenly quit mid-song. Tried everything - PRAM, SMC, upgrading to 10.9.1, looks like I have to make an 8 hour round trip to Chengdu to visit an Apple Store.

Thank you!!

I have a temporary fix.

In my case, whenever I plug my headphones to my Macbook Air 2013, some of the times, audio is simply stopped and in my headphones a buzzzzz sound starts coming.

If I remove my headphones, and try to use internal speakers, then again there is no sound. And in meanwhile, if I go to system preferences >> audio >> there I find "play sound effects through - headphones" and even my headphones are not connected now lol"

My Temporary solution:

First Solution - Simply restart your book (most frustrating thing haha) and even after restarting your mbook again the problem occurs then it is like throwing your book on the wall haha (but we can't)

Second Solution - I was just doing hit and trial methods. I was away from home and was not carrying any Internet medium to get it to my MB Air, so I was playing with it and doing every possible thing I could do overcome the audio problem.

Before going to steps, I am assuming your macbook air is still set to headphones, however headphones are not actually connected now and there is no sound coming out of internal speakers.

Step1: Close the running sound track, video or any media that can produce sound (you can also pause)

Step2: Close the LID of your MB Air. And after 10 to 15 seconds open the LID (please note that by closing the LID your MB is going into small sleep). As you would open the LID, you won't see any display, you have to switch on "power button" one / two times, wait for 5 to 10 seconds to appear something on display.

Step3: Close the LID again and suddenly open it after 5 to 10 seconds, try to increase or decrease the sound, you would hear sound is coming out of internal speakers. (If now you would connect headphones, it won't go in headphones mode anyhow, meanwhile pause/stop all the media content that you are running and producing sound through internal speakers)

Step4: Close the LID again and connect the headphones, open the LID after 10 seconds, don't play or test any sound meanwhile, after waiting for 5 to 10 seconds, you can play music or increase/decrease volume and this time sound will come through Headphones. Cheers!

This is working fine with me. You can repeat the step 4 until you won't receive any sound coming through headphones.

Just wanted to say that my wife and I both have 2013 macbook air's and our sound goes completely out randomly. Have to reboot to get sound back.

I started to have these sounds issues on the first couple of days on my Macbook Air (mid2013) and for me it didn't matter whether I've had headphones conneceted or not when going to sleep. This bug is really annoying since I use my mac for mainly to produce music and I used to have these problems on PC world and buying a macbook was my

I found out that for me the problem occurs when I have the battery saving option "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" on. If I put it off it seems that the issue never occures on my Macbook air.

I'm glad the problem is gone for now but I'm still disappointed that there are issues like this on Mac. Makes me wonder is this a hardware or software problem since I had no problems on my Macbook pro mid 2012 running Mountain lion and the other difference is that Air has SSD. Is SSD the problem?

I'm also really annoyed about a bug on my iPhone 5 which makes the use LTE impossible because the use of this starts some sort of memory loop and my phone and it gets really slow and the touchscreen goes haywire.

Where is that great quality and flawless experience which made me an Apple user in the first place.... I hope you didn't bury these values with the great Steve Jobs. May he rest in peace!

I feel the same way. I've been using Apple computers since 1986 and I never had such unreliable hardware before.

I always had hard disk sleep unchecked, so that's not my issue. My sound has randomly come back on a few times, but only briefly. The worst part is that I'm 4 hours away from the nearest Apple Store and the authorized service provider in my city won't even look at it - they just want to take it away for 3 days. This is the service Apple provides on a brand new $1300 machine??! It's been several weeks of this, and I'm still outraged. Not sure I'll ever buy another Apple product.

Guys, I think I resolved the problem with sound. What I did? I wanted to check if the problem exist in other system so I booted Ubuntu 13.10 (no sound on Ubuntu 12.04 for me) from pendrive. On Ubuntu everythink was working fine (no problems with sound during playing youtube or music from hard disk). Aftert that I booted up OS X again and the problem disappeard! I dont know why, I dont know how, but the problem disappeard. I had the problem after repacking my macbook from the box.

If this method will work also for you I will write to Apple to pay me some millions $$$ for solving the problem which they cant resolve for months :-) .

About my problem of the past:

I had the sound during first 10 seconds of the song on youtube. On spotify it was moreless 30 seconds. After that time I could hear some crashes and I was loosing the sounds. Temporal fixing it was force close of coreaudio process or pluging in and out any speakers. The same symptoms like yours.

This never would have happened if Steve was still around. you've changed macbook

Simple do a ...

sudo killall coreaudiod

Having this issue also. Have been to Apple store twice now to try to resolve. First we did the audio reset steps, next we had the operation system reinstalled. Both have temporarily resolved the issue but it continues to return. FWIW, typically we don't use Bluetooth so it's normally off but as others have stated, not really a fix if you have to disable a key feature to get another to work.

We are not able to find a consistent pattern for what occurs just before the audio fails.

The saga continues for me. 4th interaction with Apple now. First did the PRAM/SMC audio reset, then some kind of update to OS, then complete wipe of OS and reinstall (that cost me an addl $80 to buy an external hard drive that was Time Machine compatable to get a backup of files), now they have had me remove two .plist files from the file path in the screen shot below and restart machine.

Will post outcome here, but we find that these "fixes" have been temporary at best. The problem returns in a few days. While we still can't pin down the exact steps to replicate, it seems to be related to using the audio output jack and closing the lid.

What is most disturbing is that you pay a premium for what is supposed to be good quality hardware and something as relatively basic as audio isn't working. And while the folks at Apple have been friendly and helpful along the way, increasingly it seems they are guessing and grasping at straws to get to root cause.

More to come sadly.

I haven't even seen any change at all from any of these temporary fixes. I've been without sound for 2 months!! On a $1300 machine?! Excuse me, but I am not a rich person. I can't be throwing over a thousand dollars down a drain!

How long does Apple expect us to limp around with broken equipment before they finally do what they should have done from the start? REPLACE OUR DEFECTIVE COMPUTERS. THIS IS ABSURD. Even a bottom-tier company like Dell or Asus issues replacements when their products are flat busted.