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Crackling / Skipping / Stuttering Audio on MBP M3

S

Sptzz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 13, 2024
156
109
So, I absolutely adore my M3 Max 16" MBP. Best laptop purchase I've made after years and years of being away from Apple.

But there's something I find disgustingly unacceptable. I even formatted 3 days ago to "start" fresh as I "screwed" with it when I first got it relearning everything.

So, even after an absolutely fresh install, if I'm for example watching a Youtube video and just browsing, opening tabs, installing apps, moving stuff around, the audio will just simply skip/stutter for a millisecond, its VERY noticeable, this happens constantly. Doesnt matter if I'm using the optical out or internal speakers.

I read a few posts about this online but how on EARTH has Apple not fixed this? Audio integrity and continuity is PARAMOUNT for a good experience, none of my previous laptops or desktops EVER did this.
 
Something isn't right here.

What BROWSER are you using to watch these videos?

Have you tried one or two OTHER browsers, just to see if the problems can be duplicated with them, as well?
 
I need to really push my old mid-2010, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mac mini to get bad audio like this, and it only seems to do that when it's swapping. It's much worst than what you show here, but it's still sub-second skips. The main drive has been upgraded to SSD and the RAM to 16GB.

I find it awful that such newer, much more powerful CPUs can skip audio like this! How much RAM does your Macs have?
 
Yvan256 said:
I need to really push my old mid-2010 G4 Mac mini to get bad audio like this, but it only it when it's swapping and it's much longer pauses but still sub-second skips. The main drive has been upgraded to SSD and the RAM to 16GB.

How much RAM does your Macs have?
Click to expand...

48GB... It's a M3 Max. This has happened since I got it. Same as my gf's, also a M3 Max.

The video I just recorded is on a week old fresh format.
 
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Do you have any intel based software that interacts with audio? I at least found this seemed to cause glitching for me, unless rerouted it through soundflower or similar.
 
iMacDragon said:
Do you have any intel based software that interacts with audio? I at least found this seemed to cause glitching for me, unless rerouted it through soundflower or similar.
Click to expand...

Nope. All ARM native. And nothing extensive in the background as you can see at the bottom.
 
I've monitored in Activity Monitor when I'm doing what I did in the video. Also changing tabs with ctrl + tab for example and User CPU % jumps from 3% to 14% max.

Arc Renderer Process shows like 101-110% which means saturating 1 full core and a bit of a second when doing this scrolling and changing tabs quickly.
 
The best audio Apple ever put in a machine were the sumptuous stereo cone-speakers in the 24" white iMac. It's been slowly downhill ever since.
 
Thing is the audio is fine. For laptop speakers they're unreal. This is 100% a software issue.
 
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Have you tried audio through headphone jack or HDMI to rule out it's not the built-in speaker/circuitry?
 
halledise said:
it could also be the uploaded youtube clip that is at fault?
Click to expand...
??

No. This only happens when I'm scrolling youtube or moving the mouse over video thumbnails and they start playing the first few seconds or changing tabs. Got nothing to do with the video.

I even illustrated that by not moving the mouse for a few seconds.
 
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This is almost definitely a fault with apple silicon.

I love my M1 Max but it’s done the same thing since the day I bought it. It’s very clearly tied to processor load. with mine it mainly happens with more intensive work like initiating a 3d render. Also worth noting it occasionally accompanies entire application crashes - although I can’t say for sure if it’s the cause or just a symptom of the crash.

Disappointing to hear this is still an issue with M3 hardware. Again the likelihood of it being anything else is extremely low, as this issue hasn’t existed on any previous machines I’ve owned, some of which are still running the same os and software tasks and never once exhibiting this behaviour.

And lastly, for anyone chiming in that it can’t be the hardware because they haven’t experienced it, I wouldn’t rule out that it is a QC issue that doesn’t affect all apple silicon machines equally, but that is little comfort for the people who have gotten lemons. A friend has the same issue on his machine, so anecdotally I’m not inclined to rule it out as a vanishingly small percentage either.

OP if your symptoms are frequent enough and in first party apps, maybe take it in to an Apple Store to see what they say. I’m still under AppleCare but I’ve felt like Apple would just pass the buck to blender or adobe or DaVinci resolve since mine occurs primarily while using 3rd party software.
 
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stevemiller said:
This is almost definitely a fault with apple silicon.

I love my M1 Max but it’s done the same thing since the day I bought it. It’s very clearly tied to processor load. with mine it mainly happens with more intensive work like initiating a 3d render. Also worth noting it occasionally accompanies entire application crashes - although I can’t say for sure if it’s the cause or just a symptom of the crash.

Disappointing to hear this is still an issue with M3 hardware. Again the likelihood of it being anything else is extremely low, as this issue hasn’t existed on any previous machines I’ve owned, some of which are still running the same os and software tasks and never once exhibiting this behaviour.

And lastly, for anyone chiming in that it can’t be the hardware because they haven’t experienced it, I wouldn’t rule out that it is a QC issue that doesn’t affect all apple silicon machines equally, but that is little comfort for the people who have gotten lemons. A friend has the same issue on his machine, so anecdotally I’m not inclined to rule it out as a vanishingly small percentage either.

OP if your symptoms are frequent enough and in first party apps, maybe take it in to an Apple Store to see what they say. I’m still under AppleCare but I’ve felt like Apple would just pass the buck to blender or adobe or DaVinci resolve since mine occurs primarily while using 3rd party software.
Click to expand...

I fully believe this is software. After a reboot, tried it again and it's not doing it, tomorrow it probably will. There's tons of reddit threads about this and posts on Apple's forums. Some people have claimed killing "coreaudiod" process fixes it temporarily, which may be why after a reboot, it's absolutely fine. But eventually it will come back and get progressively worse.

Being software means its fixable but it's an absolute joke we're heading to the 4th generation of Apple Silicon and this is still a thing.
 
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stevemiller said:
This is almost definitely a fault with apple silicon.

I love my M1 Max but it’s done the same thing since the day I bought it. It’s very clearly tied to processor load. with mine it mainly happens with more intensive work like initiating a 3d render. Also worth noting it occasionally accompanies entire application crashes - although I can’t say for sure if it’s the cause or just a symptom of the crash.

Disappointing to hear this is still an issue with M3 hardware. Again the likelihood of it being anything else is extremely low, as this issue hasn’t existed on any previous machines I’ve owned, some of which are still running the same os and software tasks and never once exhibiting this behaviour.

And lastly, for anyone chiming in that it can’t be the hardware because they haven’t experienced it, I wouldn’t rule out that it is a QC issue that doesn’t affect all apple silicon machines equally, but that is little comfort for the people who have gotten lemons. A friend has the same issue on his machine, so anecdotally I’m not inclined to rule it out as a vanishingly small percentage either.

OP if your symptoms are frequent enough and in first party apps, maybe take it in to an Apple Store to see what they say. I’m still under AppleCare but I’ve felt like Apple would just pass the buck to blender or adobe or DaVinci resolve since mine occurs primarily while using 3rd party software.
Click to expand...

I've had an M1 MacBook Pro since 2021 and haven't noticed anything unusual audio wise.... I often play stellaris while listening to Youtube music and podcasts. Stellaris gets pretty heavy late game and the fans usually hit 2000rpm or thereabouts.
 
I remember seeing reports of similar issue back with M1 but not everyone was affected. Reading the second Reddit link you posted where some mentioned that disabling Siri fixed it and correlating my experience with not being affected but I didn't sign into iCloud nor enable any services like Siri you may be right that it's software or service related. Perhaps try resetting your device but don't enable any services and see if it goes away.
 
mi7chy said:
I remember seeing reports of similar issue back with M1 but not everyone was affected. Reading the second Reddit link you posted where some mentioned that disabling Siri fixed it and correlating my experience with not being affected but I didn't sign into iCloud nor enable any services like Siri you may be right that it's software or service related. Perhaps try resetting your device but don't enable any services and see if it goes away.
Click to expand...

As I've said before. I've already done 2 full formats. I don't use Siri, it's the first thing I disable. This also happens with my gf's m3 max (exact same spec)
 
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Just tried with Edge as well. Same thing. Youtube in the background. Scrolling through twitter, when some vids try to load by hovering or just simply scrolling, tiny skips occur. Or even closing Mail's window for example.
 
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It is definitely software, yes, all audio gets filtered through a process running on one of the E cores as it gets output to ensure the speakers shouldn't blow from too strong an audio output, and if this gets interrupted for some reason a glitch happens.
 
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iMacDragon said:
It is definitely software, yes, all audio gets filtered through a process running on one of the E cores as it gets output to ensure the speakers shouldn't blow from too strong an audio output, and if this gets interrupted for some reason a glitch happens.
Click to expand...

Which theoretically is fine, question is, how on earth has Apple not addressed this? I know why actually, because even though it's absolutely ******* 99% of Apple Stans don't even give a **** and keep licking them boots.
 
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