Level 1

56 points

MacBook Pro (2018) Audio on videos cuts out randomly

I bought the all-new 2018 MacBook Pro (13 inch, touchbar, 256 gb) yesterday and have been having issues since. While streaming video, every 5-15 minutes the audio of the video will cut out but the video will continue to play. If I stop the video and refresh the page, the video does not play. If I stop the video, wait about a minute, then refresh the page, the video plays with sound again.

This has been happening on Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube so it is not a problem with the site itself. I have reset my Wifi and router and have not experienced this problem from my iPhone, so I don't believe that that is the issue either.

Any thoughts? It's disappointing that this is happening when this computer is so new.

MacBook Pro TouchBar and Touch ID, macOS High Sierra (10.13.6)

Posted on Jul 17, 2018 2:29 PM

Top-ranking reply

ewtwolf

Level 1

8 points

Posted on Sep 13, 2018 5:09 AM

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.

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75 replies

Sep 27, 2018 10:22 AM in response to tijanifromparis

the problems persist in Mojave update... :/

Godhell

Level 1

5 points

Dec 25, 2018 11:04 AM in response to Godhell

Update: Youtube is also severely affected, turning Siri off makes no good.

Godhell

Level 1

5 points

Dec 25, 2018 11:19 AM in response to Godhell

iTunes is also affected when playing Apple Music tracks - too many sound cutouts.

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Jan 13, 2019 4:57 AM in response to Kastelrojo

Wow, thanks for the tip! :)

Jan 13, 2019 6:05 PM in response to Kastelrojo

Interesting! Thanks for the advice I will try it out and see what happens, hopefully apple will fix this soon,

Feb 5, 2019 4:09 PM in response to a7madAli

I also have this issue! (Low frame rate on the account icons at log in) in addition to the sound problem.

mlamb82

Level 1

4 points

Feb 8, 2019 3:31 PM in response to skylar73

This happens to me, but I have the new MacBook Air! This is really frustrating because I use this work, and we often do video conferences via Google Hangouts. Really hoping there's a fix soon.

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Apr 12, 2019 2:57 PM in response to Bradri

Thanks for the report.

Aug 6, 2018 2:19 AM in response to phifre

A week since disabling "Hey Siri" (only that, not Siri in general) and the problem never occurred. Enabled Hey Siri again this morning and the problem started again. Pretty sure it is really the "Hey Siri" part that is responsible

TechDocD

Level 1

4 points

Aug 21, 2018 8:50 AM in response to GotDamned

I just tried this and it worked for me. Why the heck would something like opening an incognito window work over resetting the dang NVRAM?! My mind is in shambles over this.

I have had my 2018 MacBook Pro 13" w/ Touch bar, 1TB, 16GB for one whole week now. What even is this!?!

ewtwolf

Level 1

8 points

Sep 12, 2018 11:01 AM in response to balander

Just a heads up for everyone experiencing this issue, there is a bug with MBPs running High Sierra or Mojave and its AppleSmartBatteryManager.kext driver. It runs in the background every 60 seconds and it is old code. It uses a method that takes priority over any CoreAudio processes, and runs a long uninterrupted cycle ~1sec. So streaming audio can overload the CoreAudio buffer causing the drop outs. It’s more noticeable if you do pro audio work at low latencies. Streaming YouTube or music typically is high enough latency to avoid it. But there are other background processes that can also take priority over audio and when they line up with the battery manager and you have an audio stream, well then the audio loses out and you get the glitch. The reason is CoreAudio shares the System bus WorkLoop processes as part of IOKit. So they get threaded onto the same core. To minimize the problem. Don’t use Siri, turn off Safari and use something like the Opera browser, turn off iCloud, and you can disable the battery driver but it requires digging into system files, renaming the file and clearing the kext caches through terminal. But you lose battery status so not a real fix. They really need to move the CoreAudio work off the system bus workloop and give it high priority on a separate core.

ewtwolf

Level 1

8 points

Sep 12, 2018 11:20 AM in response to ewtwolf

Open console and leave it running. Next time you get an audio glitch note the time it happened and look in the console for the CoreAudio Overload message. See what was running right before it. Chances are a Kernel process called the AppleSmartBatteryManager started its poll. Other culprits are Watchdog events and Apple Push Service and iCloud stuff. I submitted a dev bug but the more people that point it out to Apple the more likely to get fixed.

Dec 10, 2018 3:47 PM in response to ewtwolf

I'm having issues with audio drops on my new Mac mini running 10.14.1. I am an audio engineer and this issue seems to translate into my recorded audio as well as general audio output. What you're talking about seems to be related to my issue. My dropouts are 1 second at most and happen while listening to audio across the board (Safari, Logic, Spotify). Granted I am using an external audio interface (Lynx Aurora 8 via usb). I assume the problem is happening because my hardware isn't interfacing correctly or there is a Mac system issue. It's really tough for me to isolate the problem and monitor through the mini's audio D/A converter since most of my work is based around the I/O of the external audio interface.

Do you have any more information on avoiding coreaudio overload?

Jan 28, 2019 1:51 PM in response to skylar73

I've also been having this problem, for about a year now.

I'm on an iMac 2017, 32GB, 3.5 GHZ i5.

Mojave 10.14.2

It really is annoying - there are various workarounds, but why should we be having to do this?

Sometimes the only solution is, for example if pressing stop on a youtube video also stops everything else (such as iTunes) - to turn down the sound (but not press stop) on that video. Or equally just turn the sound down on iTunes so other apps can run sound.

I'm running High Sierra Media Key Enabler which does help to some extent, but it's still as buggy as....deeply annoying, particularly because I edit sound and video in various packages, and often lose track of what exactly I have to turn down or

off to get the sound running properly - I can't believe Apple have taken so long to look into this, considering the time span of the issue, which seems to be relatively widespread. Help!!

heena_ad

Level 1

8 points

Dec 1, 2018 10:59 PM in response to skylar73

I'm having the same problem.

Did you find any solution for it?

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MacBook Pro (2018) Audio on videos cuts out randomly