How to Fix Cracking and Popping Sound ?

I've been trying to solve this on a Mac for months now without success. Today, for kicks I disabled (not uninstalled) the SalesLoft extension in Chrome video started playing just fine. Toggle it back on, and the crackling noise comes back.

I've had this issue with my 2021 M1 MBP since I bought it. On the basis of this thread I upgraded to Sonoma but that doesn't seem to affect it at all. My biggest offender is Bitwig, which seems to be unusually common in these replies for a relatively niche DAW. My issues don't seem related to buffer overloads or high DSP activity, and aren't fixed by increasing the buffer length. Really irritating.

I use the latest version of MacOs Sonoma 14.1.1:

If the memory pressure of my macbook air m1 goes to yellow, then the music playing randomly lags, it makes like a micro click.

My typical workflow is having various chrome tabs, firefox , Spotify (for music) and a couple of IDEs for programming.

Honestly this is the first computer that has audio that lags....and if the problem doesn't resolve it will be my last mac... With what it costs it is in my opinion a serious problem, a user experience that is inevitably damaged by not being able to serenely hear music without it being ruined by some random ms of interruption.

years and years after, still have crackling and poping issue with a brand new Mac 16, only solution found is rebooting another observation I have is that Microsoft Teams is often the app that starts crackling, then afterward it's a crack-fest in youtube videos in chrome and other app that emits sounds

Wow, seems like a serious thing, it happens in fact sometimes for me while coding with bunch of chrome tabs and big software like QGIS ... MB Pro 14 M1 32 gb RAM... Interesting to see how they will fix that...

I have the same issue with MacBook Pro 16 M1.

When I'd faced with the issue for a first time I am also as other guys thought it is due to bad quality of audio.

Currently I have only one solution is to use Bluetooth Headset.

It is shame on Apple for not fixing this issue for laptop that is not so cheep

M3 Max 36GB MBP 16" (no usb dacs, just native speakers)

Back to Apple after 18 years. Waited for apple silicon to mature a bit and decided to go with this generation. Am absolutely dumbfounded to see this issue. I don't have any crackles or popping. What I do have is the sound having micro cuts, be it Youtube, Spotify and it doesn't even need massive loads or spikes for it to happen. No memory pressure at all. This is actually unbelievable and unacceptable on such an expensive computer. Have dirt cheap laptops that handle audio better than this.

Clearly something is amiss with Core Audio, not sure why Apple aren't addressing this as sound performance is absolutely mandatory for a smooth experience. Thank God I'm not back to doing audio engineering on Macs this is unacceptable.

I'm on Sonoma 14.2.1 (23C71) on an M1 MBP. I've had the staticy issue for 3 OS versions now. It always shows up when the memory pressure goes yellow (higher than 75%) in activity monitor. Thankfully I've been able to fix it (for a time) by switching outputs to MacbookPro Speakers, then back to my external USB DAC. Force quitting CoreAudio works too, but is more disruptive. The problem also resolves if I quit some memory heavy apps or close tabs.

It's definitely CoreAudio interacting with low memory situations that causes it. I wish this machine had more than 16GB of RAM.

This is ridiculous I have been having this issue with my 2019 Macbook Pro, now got a 2023 Macbook Pro with M3 Pro and 36 GB of memory. Memory usage is usually low and still get this crackling, popping sound when listening to music, being on Google Meets calls on Sonoma 14.1 (23B2073).

it is mind-blowing that after all these years iMac users are still experiencing this crackling sound issue for a ridiculous expensive laptop! I bought my MacBook Pro in 2020 and had on and off issues with the crackling sound ever since. It was gone for quite a while, now I did an update (sanoma 14.4.1) yesterday and it's back again! Never will buy an iMac again because of this. Did anyone find a way to fix this problem??

I started getting these crackling/popping noises on my 2023 MacBook Pro along with my 2024 M3 MacBook Pro. I'm surprised this issue has been known for this long and still hasn't been fixed.

I listen to music via Bluetooth on a BoseQC45 headphones on a M1 Max (64GB Ram) without any memory pressure, and this glitch happens very often (while typing this text, the glitch happened at least 3 times - it sounds like a scratch sound you would get on the old vinyl records).

For me I noticed the glitch or pop / crackle sound occurs when a A2DP packet flushed occurs. At first I thought it was RF interference, but I am doubting this more and more. I am considering getting a bluetooth dongle for the M1, but have not gotten round to do that just yet.

Has apple responded to this problem in this thread yet?

Here is a log extract of when the sound glitch occurs: error 19:46:49.546658+1200 bluetoothd A2DP packet flushed: L2CAP (chip) flush occured. Current sequence=40623, timestamp=18463685

I have Sonoma 14.4.1 and the crackling just started today. Do we know how to fix this?

Same problem here. Left speaker started cracking today. On Sonoma 14.4.1 - MBP M2 Max - 64 GB. To be honest upgrading to Sonoma is very disappointing. Very unstable system. Anyone have any idea when Apple will release an update of the OS?

💡Some potential causes/fixes

Coreaudiod

I've seen this happen a lot on macs that are rarely ever shutdown completely coreaudiod may have some kind of memory leak but using the terminal and running the command 'sudo pkill coreaudiod' has solved the issue in these cases the coreaudio daemon will restart. Complete shutdown/restart should work too in those cases if you don't want to run anything in the terminal.

Sampling Rate

"The I don't know *** is causing it but this seems to work for me fix" run the Midi click on 'Macbook Pro Speakers' or whatever other audio devices you use. Changing format on the right from 44khz -> 48khz has made the popping go away for me before. As to why it worked? 🤷🏻

3rd Party Audio Daemons/Plug-Ins

I have seen some issues like this come up If you have any third party audio daemons or plugins like Boom2/Boom3D, Sound Booster, BackgroundMusic. You may want to do the same thing as above with the Midi app for their virtual devices. If that isn't working, it may be worth trying to 'thoroughly' removing them.

Hopefully this'll be useful for some of you. I doubt it'll cover every potential cause but I've seen these work for popping issues in several cases.