How to Fix Cracking and Popping Sound ?

I was getting this gradually creeping in during the day - clicking and crackling while listening to Spotify. Following previous advice on closing apps I just quit Firefox which had 96 tabs open and the crackling disappeared instantly. I still have loads of apps open including Android Studio, mail, chrome etc Restarting FF with the same number of tabs as before didnt interfere with the music for a while - but it started to creep in over time. I never switch my Mac off just put it to sleep.

So most likely an accumulated memory issue, or one of the tabs played audio which was interfering with Spotify. None of the other fixes work except for the reboot which effectively restarts Firefox anyway. This was on a MBP 14" 2021 32GB M1 Max

Having same issue on my new Macbook Pro 16" 2021. It's very annoying! Neither killing coreaudio, nor changing bit rate or deleting com.apple.audio.* files helped me. Stopping all intel processes not helping neither. Have MacOs Monterey 12.3.1. When using my AirPods Pro can hear sound cracking too. :( What other solutions can be helpful?? Please assist.

Same problem with my MBP 2021 16". And with my previous MBP 2019, whose right speaker started to crack instantly as completely broken :(

Hi ,

I have the same damn problem for long time with 16" macbook pro 2019. Just like everyone else here, I am very angry at apple because they haven't fix this since decades. Other than that, the solution that worked for me for some time is the command below. I suggest everyone to try this. It doesn't fix it permanently but it is easy to do

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.audio.coreaudiod && sudo launchctl start com.apple.audio.coreaudiod

Ok, after a few weeks of playing around, I am convinced that this is related to memory pressure somehow. I no longer need to restart to eliminate the problem.

Whenever I get the distortions, I open the Memory tab in the Activity Monitor and sort the processes by memory used. I close/restart the apps that are top users of the memory until the memory pressure is back in the green. This resolves all the distortions until the memory climbs back to orange which will happen as quickly as you make it to.

Now I have to micro-manage my f****** memory like in the olden days.

I regret downgrading from 32gb ram to 16gb so much right now. Thanks to all the damn influencers praising how good the memory management of the new chip is.

It would be more than great if someone is/could testing/test the new beta of Ventura for some hours/days and tell us his results if he still experience the same problems.

I appreciate it!

Same issue with the macbook pro 2021 16 inch. For some time I had only issue listening to spotify, but now it happens with all sound sources

Is there any Apple's developer here?

Using expensive headphones, crystal clear with other devices, how can I have buzzing sound when I move my cursor above PhpStorm or when I scroll on Firefox????? How is that POSSIBLE?!

It goes away after rebooting, and it doesn't start for a while. So it has to be software issue as it has been said thousands times above.

Pls, fix this on new Ventura, I can't mention how terrible it is. 3000 euros machine, Jesus Christ.

This better be fixed in Ventura. Apple you CANNOT ignore over 100k view posts like this, you even have people with logs exactly stating the problem. Get on with fixing this, enoughs enough now.

I am aware that my answer will not bring anything really new. I was thinking about my problem identical to yours, and I wanted to come back here to say that I bought my MBP M1 Pro in December 2021 and my first crackling worries started around February (as far as I remember). I already had 99% of my applications in place. Obviously I don't remember if I installed anything at all the day it happened to me. It worked fine without a hitch for 3 months before I had the problems... and since then it makes me sicker every time (and I don't have the desire or the time to reinstall everything from scratch (which the Genius Bar suggests I do after claiming my MBP's hardware test was flawless).

MacBook Pro M1 Pro. Monterey 12.4, Apple Music

Have the same issue. Internal speakers and in AirPods too.

Lots more folks still having this issue with the new 2022 M1s. It's so bad that the audio for most things is completely useless unless using headphones or bluetooth speakers. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253681560.

Drop $4K, get a POS laptop that Apple doesn't seem to care about fixing because not enough people are having the problem? I can't even play audio consistently without pops and cracks hurting my ears at random. It'd be comical if it weren't just plain sad. I exchanged the laptop and the next one had the same exact problem. Unfortunately, needed a new macbook for dev builds, so I had to keep it. If I was a consumer, I'd return the thing and never buy Apple products again given the level of non-support (which is simply astonishing).

Hi everyone, I think I solved my problem of cracking and popping sounds. I have a MacBook Pro 16 M1 - 16 Go RAM (sorry in advance for my english : I'm French :-D

• 1— Everything was working fine with the sound when the MBpro M1 was running the factory version of MacOS. As soon as I made an update to Monterey, BOOM ! The cracking and popping sounds started. I think I try everything described on the internet and nothing solved it really.
• 2— I try a last thing : starting the Mac without any extensions. The problems with the sound were suddenly gone. So I figured out the problem could be an app running on my Mac.
• 3— So I started my Mac on normal mode to desactivate manually a few things running in the background. I found that the app "Magnet" could be a troublemaker because the sound problem was not as intense as before suddenly.
• 4— On that basis, I did an experiment with each software I have : I put music from YouTube in Safari, launch an app and I work with the app for a bit. My conclusion : with softwares that are coded for the Apple Chips (noted "Universal" or "Apple" in the Activity Monitor), there are no sound problem at all. If I open an app coded for Intel (eg : Guitar Pro), the crack/popping sound problem starts at the launch of the app and keep going worst and worst. I can reproduce the same thing with every app that are code for "Intel". So my guess is : the problem appears when an Intel app is going through Rosetta (which is the piece of MacOS that helps Intel app to work on Apple Chip Macs)
• 5— About the Magnet app : the app is noted as "Universal". My guess is part of the app is largely based on the Intel code (don't laugh people, I'm not really an expert as you guys :-). So it's perhaps going through Rosetta to work on my M1 Mac. So the sound problem never stops when Magnet is opened (Magnet is an app that work permanently in the background).

Everything seems OK since a few days. I will give an update if something new. I hope it helps. Best from Paris.

Same issue...This is a joke, 4k laptop to video editing and is imposible mix any audio. i tried in premiere pro and davinci resolve.

Hi - I registered just to share my workaround as this audio popping issue has been beyond annoying... from my testing using a 3rd party audio driver stops this issue... I installed an app call Boom 3D and all pops are gone in speakers / headphones etc.

Boom 3D is designed to enhance audio output. I have all the app audio enhancement features turned off - as I don't want my audio modified but there are 0 pops when using this audio driver / app.

https://www.globaldelight.com/boom/

They have a trial so test it out if you want.