My MacBook Pro 2018 version speakers are crackling.

Hey! I had the same issue. I think I've managed to fix it by making sure that my MIDI output is set to 48.000 Hz. Go to Audio MIDI Setup settings, under Macbook Pro Speakers set the output to 48.000 Hz if its anything else (like 44). You might have a software installed that has changed the Hz value (and possibly some other under-the-hood sound settings as well). So far it has fixed the issue to set it back. I have not yet updated to Mojave, but has installed all updates up until that. See picture below.

I hope this will help someone!

I have the crackling sound on my MBP 13" 2018 Touchbar i7.

I believe it's a audio clock sync problem, it sounds like that (more like a glitch interrupted sound with a bit of digital distortion and and time/pitch shifting, rather than a "crackling", at least on mine).

If i open/Applications/Utilities/Audio Midi Setup and change the input or output sample rate to 48 khz and then back to 44 khz (or viceversa, depending which one you currently use) it will get back to normal.

I will do more tests, but this seems to solve it for now. Obviously it's always a good idea to check with Apple directly, but to me it looks like a software problem. This is also different from the popping sound that some users are reporting.

EDIT: This does not seem to happen with my external sound card, but more testing is needed.

Right @Everyone I have spoken to Apple support via chat and also the technical team and apple care team regarding a few of the issues. One being the thermal throttling issues in bootcamp, and the main issue being the speaker crackling sound which has been occurring in both Mac OS and in bootcamp windows. I linked our forum page to the support which they have seen. In addition to this I have been told to inform you all that on the Mac Side a temporary workaround is to open up activity monitor and kill the process 'coreaudiod' this process stopping should stop the crackling on Mac OS. They have said that they are of this issue and that a fair number of people are having the same problem with the 2018 lineup. I have also been told that an update will be released soon to address this issue so hopefully it fixes this soon. During my own testing a temp fix for bootcamp can be to use bluetooth headphones so you don't have to restart your game or music every now and then via changing the audio source to stop crackling temporarily. And in power options in windows 10 changing the max processor state to 90% whilst on battery and charging helps the throttling issues.

Lets just hope apple fixes all these issues soon and this update comes sooner rather than later. Just worried about the speakers condition from all these crackling sounds.

Hey ehsanw97

the main issue being the speaker crackling sound which has been occurring in both Mac OS and in bootcamp windows.

I have nothing on my Mac but Traktor and some audio, and a couple of drivers for controllers. (same with my last 2018 laptop)

During my own testing a temp fix for bootcamp can be to use bluetooth headphones so you don't have to restart your game or music every now and then via changing the audio source to stop crackling temporarily.

I have found that the sound issues can occur on both headphones and speakers. Only an external sound card fully solves the problem.

In addition to this I have been told to inform you all that on the Mac Side a temporary workaround is to open up activity monitor and kill the process 'coreaudiod' this process stopping should stop the crackling on Mac OS.

Pretty much stopping anything and restarting stops the problem but it returns.

They have said that they are of this issue and that a fair number of people are having the same problem with the 2018 lineup. I have also been told that an update will be released soon to address this issue so hopefully it fixes this soon

Thanks for the heads up on all this and sharing it with us here. Lets hope. I get the worrying feeling that this fix will take from somewhere else. Like what happened with the iPhones when they slowed them down to make them last longer.....Apple admits slowing older iPhones because of ageing batteries | Technology | The Guardian

Hi all- Updating to Mojave should fix this. I had this issue on High Sierra and early versions of Mojave but as of recent versions there has been no issues. Please make sure your OS/firmware is up to date if you would like an “immediate” fix.

I have a workaround that is much faster when you want to fix the audio temporarily.

Open Audio/Midi configuration, select the audio source you're using atm and set a different sample rate. It will clear the buffer in Core Audio, which basically has the same effect as restarting it. It's much faster and Logic doesn't have to think about it.

Yes, that's what I observed on my MacBook Pro too. On my MacBook Pro, it can also happen when I trigger system alert sound to be played (from System Preferences - Sound) and/or sound effect from notifications (i.e. Mail).

You may want to have a look at csross1's post. There's a potential workaround through Audio MIDI Setup. For some reason, my MacBook already had the same sampling format so I was unable to follow the suggestion exactly, but my MacBook Pro has been crackling noise free for two hours after setting sampling format to 48,000 Hz for MacBook Pro Speakers (also see my previous post).

when I received mine yesterday I immediately checked the audio MIDI setup and found the output default is 48,000, no issues till today it happened to me when my Mac under heavy load, I went back to the midi output and found it changed to 44,100 after opening garagband. I set it a gain to 48,000 and its fine now.

Obviously software bug !

hopefully apple to fix it as soon as possible

I'm in the same position as you.

Here is my story:
The day after I've had my new Mac 2018, it started to crackle because I thought it was because of Ableton 10 since it was the only ''big'' software I've installed after getting my Mac.

And I was playing a song at the loudest level possible on my new Mac and eventually, the crackling problem with my speakers became even worse than the crackling itself to the point I thought I had broken down my speakers!

The sound coming out of them was ****: it started with some major crackles/distortion followed by delays/repeating sections of the song while it was playing to finally transform the nature of the sound coming out of my speakers!! And all of a sudden, I was left with no bass/mids in my speakers AT ALL. It was as if playing this song too loud destroyed some kind of internal twitter in the speakers... At that point, I was very scared that it was broken for ever and super disappointed that the Mac just couldn't handle the sound being played a little louder than usual...

So I started to make some research about my problem and see if I was the only one facing the same problem and that's how I found this forum.

So I decided to reset EVERYTHING and delete everything that I had transferred from my old Mac to this new one just to see if doing a major rebooting would solve my problem.

So after completely restarting my Mac 2018, like the first time opening it, resetting the whole thing like it's brand new again actually solved the crackles and the other big issue that happened before with the quality sound of my speakers!!

At that point, I was just super happy that my Mac 2018 was back to normal again!!!

But I thought I could just wait to see if all these problems were gonna start again, since it seemed to be an issue entitled to Mac 2018...

So I've waited a while before actually installing Ableton again or transfer anything else/files to see if the crackling had something to do with any imported softwares or files. So at that point, all I was doing was to watch plenty of videos on YouTube or just listening to some music on Spotify and wait for the crackles to show up again.

AND IT DID (after 2 or 3 days of using the speakers quite intensively).

Conclusion...:

IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH F*CKING TIME MACHINE GUYS!!!

2nd part of my story:

I decided not to get my new Mac 2018 replaced by another one because what's the point of getting a new one with which there's a very good chance I might be confronted with the exact same problem again?!...

So I tried to even the sample rates of the mic and the speakers (48 000 Hz) and that seems to work nicely for now. but if it doesn't I'll definitely share my experience here again...

Okay , i just had my senior adviser guy call me who is personally handling my case. Apple engineers have internally acknowledged what is going on but nothing has been done publicly. They have told me that i can chose to wait for the mojave update but if i dont want to then they can look at other options as the device i have is not satisfactory. He seems to think that the Mojave update will come within the next month.

In regards to Apple repairing your product i will deffo challenge them on that as i know they arent "repairing" the 2018 models right now as they dont even have a repair program going out for them yet. I am going to wait a week or so and if i have any issues im going to ask for a full refund and then just look at other device options.

I also had this problem. Try disabling “hey Siri” and check again! Worked for a lot of people including me. Also installing the latest Mojave beta should fix the problem as well (even with “hey Siri” ON)

I can tell you for sure I'm experiencing this issue daily. I've also been testing the issue aggressively. It happens system-wide, (on my machine at least)... Logic, Live, iTunes, Chrome, Finder...

And I'm finding the issue happens in headphones, not just the speakers. It seems to happen after sound has been playing for an extended period of time, no matter what app... (Just watching a movie in Hulu can kick it off.)

Next time you go out for the evening try this:

• Leave iTunes playing while your gone. See if you have distortion when you come back.

(Leave it playing when you'll be out for at least a few hours...)

Happened for me...

And, the last time I tested this I left iTunes running while I was answering emails and doing housekeeping on my machine... iTunes started distorting after about an hour, and the distortion was identical to distortion I get in Logic. It's a system-wide issue period... I suspect people who only encounter it "occasionally" are just people who aren't working with sound running for long periods of time...

Since I work in Logic and Live I'm working with sound daily for hours in a row, and I encounter the issue every single day... The most obnoxious part of the issue is that Console doesn't report it unless you use Logic, (Live as well). iTunes, Finder and Chrome don't print an error to Console. Logic does however...

The most infuriating part is that I documented this heavily and went back and forth with engineering for a couple weeks. They blew me off because I'm not on Mojave. However...

• Users told that upgrading to Mojave are reporting this does not fix the issue. 

• This does not explain why people who bought new machines with Mojave pre-installed have the exact same issue.

My advice would be to call in to Apple, get a Sr. Advisor ask to log a complaint referencing your case. Once it's logged as a complaint they may be able to give you some more options you can do to get the issue looked into...

Yeah I think you’re right. When happened while using logic it gave me a sample rate conflict error. Felt like it was a hardware issue prior to that when I was just listening to iTunes etc. Changing some sample rate settings fixed it for me, for now at least.

2016 MBP user here, who just upgraded to the 2018 MBP.

My 2018 MBP's speakers did the crackling thing too. Very loudly. After a reboot, the audio subsystem for the entire laptop was non-operational. In other words, macOS didn't list any sound devices for use. The laptop even refused to use my wireless bluetooth headphones at that point.

After resetting the SMC, the audio system resumed working... but the crackling keeps coming back. So it's definitely not a good fix.

Additionally, in Boot Camp (Win10), I'm finding that the GPU (Radeon 560X) is being inappropriately throttled, resulting in extremely low frame rates in games that ran at full 60 fps on my older 2016 MBP!

So something related to the T2 chip / SMC is pretty hosed, and I'm none too pleased about it. Going to bring this thing in to the Apple store soon and hopefully they won't tell me something dumb like "lol its a bad time machine backup".

Edit: whoops, just realized I replied to the previous post in this thread. Meant to submit a new post to the thread itself.

Hi csross1,

Thank you for the tip. Strangely enough, when I opened Audio MIDI Setup, my MacBook Pro Speakers and MacBook Pro Microphones already had the same sampling format, at 44,100 Hz. When both were the same, the speaker emits crackling noise on my MacBook Pro after about one hour of music playback (i.e. iTunes or Internet radio played from Safari).

When I connect a pair of earphones, I do not hear any crackling noise from the earphones. Upon checking the Audio MIDI Setup, I also noted that my External Headphones sampling rate was automatically set to 48,000 Hz.

Since I have not heard any crackling noise from my earphones, I tried the following.

1. Disconnect the earphones
2. I restarted my MacBook Pro and verified the sampling format of MacBook Pro Microphones and MacBook Pro Speakers are set to 44,100 Hz in Audio MIDI Setup
3. Play some music from iTunes for about one hour or more
4. After verifying that the speakers emit the crackling noise, I set the MacBook Pro Speakers sampling format to 48,000 Hz
5. Continue playback from iTunes

After more than two hours, I have not heard any crackling noise from my MacBook Pro speakers. For now, I'm still wondering if it is worthwhile for me to take the MacBook Pro for the Apple Authorized Service Provider to have a look.