MacBook Pro (2018) Audio on videos cuts out randomly

First thing to check is if you have the latest MBP High Sierra Updates. There have been two supplemental updates. 1st for the CPU throttling, and 2nd for the speaker glitching.

It is going to be a cpu threading issue if both of the updates are installed and you still experience the glitch. Most likely cause is the battery manager running all of its command checks. It polls the battery state, and that poll method runs where all of its command checks lock out the cpu core it is threaded on until they finish. The process belongs to the IOKit framework, which CoreAudio also belongs in, and CoreAudio streaming and system bus processes all share the same code WorkLoop so they get threaded onto the same cpu core. There are other system bus processes too that can run a higher priority than audio. So when you get something with all these lined up, scheduled to run on the same core, then eventually the audio buffer overloads as it takes the lower priority to get done, which can cause the CoreAudio process to reset, and you get the glitch.

It's a limitation of the IOKit stuff. They just have so many processes running in the background now. Certain things definitely cause it more often. I recommend using a different browser and close Safari. Safari, iTunes, iCloud and Siri can all get a lot of background processes running that will eventually coincide with the battery manager cycle. If you have any system bus monitoring software, like a fan controller or third party battery manager, those will definitely cause the issue, so turn them off. Also check to see if you have a Bluetooth PAN network device and remove it. It is constantly pinging any iOS device around and can cause issues. It's a pain for sure. If in doubt take it back to the store, but a new unit won't fix the issues. It's OS related.

I have the 2018 Macbook Pro w/ Touch Bar and I am experiencing the same issue as well. First, I took it to the Genius bar in store but they couldn't determine what the problem was. Second, I just contacted Apple through their online consultation session and apparently, this guy who worked on software knew the problem. He said it wasn't a hardware issue and that the problem is purely Google's fault because there are these programs called "google chrome helpers" that you can see in the memory tab in your macbook's acitivity monitor. And these helpers help everything run smoothly but they also take up a lot of the memory. So they max out the memory capacity in your macbook and that's why the audio could be glitching (?). I tested it out by waiting for the audio to cut out on a YouTube video, then from the memory tab of the activity monitor, I quit all the google chrome helpers. When I did that, it basically crashed all the tabs I had opened and the extensions as well. I only refreshed the YouTube page and the video played like normal from the start. So from this test, I think it is a problem with Google's software. The guy also said to uninstall Chrome completely and use Safari or other browsers for now and the issue should disappear. Haven't tested that out though because I can't really give up Chrome since YouTube TV only works on Chrome and not Safari. If anyone can test it out and leave your findings that'd be great!

Thank you for your help, definitely is something between the T2 and Siri.

My issue didn’t happen again since y disable Siri

I got the 15 inch (i9, 32GB RAM, 1 TB SSD)one and having the same problem.

Done some basic testing and these are my findings:

1. It's not specific to any browser (Tested on Safari and Chrome, in safari the video stops for a second and then returns but the sound takes a few seconds more and comes back as well. In chrome though if the video stopped once it won't resume!! refreshing the page also won't help! need to open a totally new tap for it to work properly again).

2. It's not browser specific (Same problem happens on Quicktime as well).

3. Tested with iTunes (audio only) and it still happens. It's more subtle but is still there.

4. It happens on both Mojave and high Sierra.

I tried to reset the audio system by doing:

1. reseting coreAudio by typing: "sudo killall coreaudiod" in terminal

2. Reset PRAM & SMC

Didn't fix anything though ....

If anyone has any input

I am also having this issue on my one week old 2018 13" macbook pro w/touchbar. I read some replies and tried the incognito window suggestion, which has worked so far. I have no clue why it helps, but I do recall having issues with google chromes "hardware acceleration" option, which is usually turned on by default. I would suggest turning that off to anyone who has google chrome installed on their MacBook, it may help and can reduce & avoid other weird bugs, like the shaking browser bug from a year or two ago.

I have narrowed down this problem to a single process running: coreaudiod

When my sound blanks out and I have video issues, I open Activity Monitor and Force Kill the process.

This is very frustrating, as I will not know when the sound goes out and I then miss notifications, such as for Work Meeting!

I am tired of this. We need an answer.😠

I had the same issue (several times daily)!

After I disabled Siri the problem didn't occur again! 🙂

So can confirm that disabling Hey Siri stopped the issue from reproducing... I'll keep streaming Youtube and report if that changes. That said, looks like this is a decent work around.

Interestingly enough, disabling Siri helped for me, at least for the past ~24 hours the problem did not occur again.
Then again, my speakers don't have any popping, so those two things might be different problems

from what I could gather, opening an incognito window has always worked for me, which makes me think it has to be a software problem. or maybe I just got lucky with it so far

I can confirm turning off "Hey Siri" helped. I replaced my Macbook Pro with a new one at the apple store, and I think that also fixed the speaker popping issue as well.

It's been 5 days since I've disabled Siri and I have not encountered this problem so far. So, I think you should do the same!

Same issue.

• 2018 MacBook Pro 15 Inch (2.6ghz/16gb/512gb)
• High Sierra (10.13.6) > Safari Browser

Description:

Audio cuts out sometimes during videos, while the video continues. Happens every 20 mins or so, and the audio seems to come back after 15ish seconds if I let the video continue playing silently.

Quick fix:

Rewind the video back to where the audio cut out (using the left arrow key).

Has anyone else experienced this on other browsers?

Also, while adding the underlines on the headings above, the Touch Bar began to flicker uncontrollably. Lots of bugs!

I too have a 13" 2018 MacBook Pro. There seem to be two separate sound problems with mine:

1) Crackling: Frequent audible crackling through built-in speakers during media playback (video or audio, through various apps including all browsers and professional audio recording software. I found a recommended fix online, and it usually works: Launch the Activity Monitor app and kill the coreaudiod process. The process will restart automatically, and the crackling will cease. This usually works for me.

2) Audio cutting out completely: Since upgrading the computer to High Sierra 10.13.6 yesterday, audio cuts out entirely (to silence) for 2-3 seconds every 10 to 20 seconds during media playback. The above fix for crackling has no effect on this problem. Restart has not helped. Diagnostic (hold the d key immediately after pressing the power button for startup) reports no hardware problems.

There is enough online chatter about these problems and various fruitless attempts to solve them by exchanging laptops that I am assuming the fault is a software issue and will be resolved in some future operating system upgrade. (Hint hint hint, if Apple is watching).

I suspect that an external audio interface will circumvent these problems, but I have not yet tried one.

This next remark doesn't help anyone, but I've been an Apple user since the early 1980s, when each new iteration was a huge leap forward. Nowadays each new iteration seems like just more of the same but with a few more lumps in the gravy. It's a complicated business, I know, but it ***** paying $4000 for a laptop that can't play an audio file or movie properly.

Hi,

Recently, I’ve started having the same problem on my oldschool MBP 17" Early-2011

i7 2,2GHz

16GB RAM

regular HDD 750GB

Mac OS SIERRA 10.12.6 (not High Sierra!)

Safari 12.0.2 (12606.3.4.1.4)

Precisely, audio cuts out while playing video in a browser (Safari) with no dependence on whether I open it in a regular or Private Browsing window.

I’ve set entire Siri to Disabled.

A reboot seems to fix off-browser video playback (i.e. in MPV), but not the browser video playback issues.

I don’t experience any cut outs in Youtube, but other streaming services are affected.

It seems the issue is related to a recent macOS security update, Safari or Flash/Java update - but I haven’t tried a rollback yet.

What I noticed is that when audio is cut out during video playback, I can’t bring the volume up or down and I’ve got a regular gray sound level square temporarily displayed, but with a small crossed circle (unavailable?)