How to Fix Cracking and Popping Sound ?

I'd be interested to know how many people experiencing this issue have tried @Milos23's suggestion of removing any Intel audio plugins from /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL, and also reducing the number of Intel processes you're running — and whether it helped. For me this hasn't completely solved the issue, but it seems to have significantly reduced its frequency.

I am one of those people. I also thought that it reduced significantly. But the experience over 3 or 4 months shows that the problem is always present, recurrent, and the regularity of the bug can not be properly appreciated.

On a machine at this price, you want zero problems. I will not be consoled to know that I have only one scratch on my new car! for me it is the same. I'm with Apple products, it's precisely to have strictly no problems of this kind.

What worries me the most is that the first returns of those who have installed MacOS Ventura beta still have the problem.

The issue is not solved on my side, but now the audio can work fine for days after a reboot. With the Teams audio plugin I started to get the sound issues within 2 hours after a reboot. Killing all Intel processes won't resolve the issue, but it still may be the cause, as I didn't try using macbook without any intel process since boot for a couple of days. Once it starts to have the cracking sound issues only a reboot seems to solve it (restarting coreaudiod helps just for a couple of minutes).

Since no one seem to read comments, I'll just write a new post. Since I switched to a new router, I noticed the problem is 100% gone on ALL of my office macs. I can also reproduce this by downloading music locally, disconnecting the network entirely and restart - then play music and there is NO crackling, not even after hours. This tells me that playing media over the network is what triggers the issue, so please try with a different NEW router.

I know it's only a temporary issue for travelers, but for offices it's a permanent fix.

Since my clean re-install more than a month ago I only had the crackling happen exactly once. I restarted the laptop immediately and had no distortions since then. I have some friends who upgraded to apple silicon too and had no issues with the sound. Might be just a coincidence, but all of them did the clean install when they bought their devices.

So there's that. If you are really desperate, I say give clean re-install a go.

Cheers

Have the same issue with my macbook pro 16" bought in 2020. They changed everything inside, but it still appears. Working on premiere pro, i'm waiting for a solution !... It getting crazy. Monterey 12.1

I was having the same problem for a long time. Only updating Spotify fixed it.

Might be best to find out which program is causing the problem. So when you hear the crackling sound, try to listen something from another program.

I've discovered that I can trigger this glitch consistently by running "sudo fs_usage bash". You can replace "bash" with the name of any running process.

(Although I don't recommend running random sudo commands that you find on the internet, this one just displays which files are being used by one of the running processes).

Not sure if this is at all useful....just thought I'd point it out.

Same issue, and happening for months. Audio is crackling/popping from internal 16" M1 speaker. On external monitor, unusable. And on airpods, usable but still has issues. OS 12.2.

MacBook Pro (16" 2021) M1 Pro running OS 12.4. I have the same issues with popping and crackling. The noise is present on built in speakers, speakers connected to the HDMI output and Bluetooth.

Have tried the following command in terminal and it has no effect.

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

Just like everyone else on this tread, I cannot believe we're still experiencing these issues. Please, Apple, get your act together.

This issue bothers me since purchase. I sent my computer back to apple and got audio hardware replaced. Not helping. Tried Ventura, no luck.

Still exactly the same in Ventura..... possibly worse. might return MacBook Pro m1pro . is useless

In my case, it looked as if 12.6. update helped, cause I hadn't had the issue for a long time. Nevertheless it's still here.

Following this problem I had to totally change my music listening habits. Today, I wanted to listen to music, and I must admit that since this early morning I have not had the slightest crackle (over 6 hours).

Do you also feel a recent improvement of the phenomenon? or is it still there for "everyone" ?

Still a problem on mine. I'm on the beta program so I got Ventura before the general release. This solved the problem for a bit but with the subsequent updates the problem returned. So tired of this...