Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
New 16" Speakers Popping
- Thread starter jogales
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Hey everyone, I have had this problem as well on my 14-inch MacBook Pro. What solved it for me was to remove all possible audio drivers that run on Intel architecture and not on Apple or Universal. I had Microsoft Teams and EpocCam audio drivers that were active all the time and had been listed in the Audio-MIDI-Setup. Once removed all crackling/popping sounds were gone and my MIDI settings now only display the native speaker and microphone. Don't forget to restart afterwards. Try to identify those drivers through the activity monitor. I registered just to post, hope this helps!
I had to make an account to say this, but I've been having the speaker popping/crackling for five months since I got my 14 inch brand new out of the box. Playing Cities Skylines I was able to easily cause the popping to happen every minute, and it happened constantly watching streaming services like Disney+. I've been with an Apple Senior Tech for a month and they've done nothing to find the problem. Here’s a video example:
Then I found your random post and gave Boom 3D a shot. After installing it...the popping/crackling stopped. All of it. All the hell that I was subjected to for five months and five macOS updates ceased to exist. Last night I played Cities Skylines for an hour, with music mods, and a lot of Windows and FireFox tabs opened. My memory was under heavy load, but nothing I threw at it caused the speaker popping to happen. The sound was absolutely perfect. Thank you qqfans and Global Delight for fixing what Apple couldn't.
So now we know what the problem is. It's not hardware, or memory. It's macOS's default audio driver CoreAudio. CoreAudio is broken and has been broken since Monterey came out; or it's not configured for 14/16 inch MBP speakers since this problem only happens with those laptops. The fact for 8 months this problem was reported to Apple by even their developer partners and they've done nothing to fix it, and according to a couple users who have the Ventura beta it's still happening, is absolutely mindboggling. We shouldn't have to buy another audio driver just to fix a simple problem in our $2000+ laptop
Anyone else with this problem, go to Boom 3D and try the 15 day free trial, and if it fixes it, buy it before June 22nd as it's on sale for $15 to celebrate their 5 year anniversary. It'll most likely fix your speakers, and it'll make your sound better too giving you an equalizer to use. https://www.globaldelight.com/boom/
Last edited:
You would have to manually locate the location. In my case I first: checked the nature of certain activity relying on Intel with the activity monitor, second: delete applications bound to those activities, which in my case were MS Teams and EpocCam and third: check for remaining plug-ins still running after removal. It will really depend on what is causing the interference. In my case the plug-ins/driver I had to delete were in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL.
I do think is big improvement. Has only been 1.5 days of uptime but I'm hoping the couple of pops I had early on were something else. I'm really trying to abuse it and I don't think has popped for at least 24 hours.
How is Apple getting away with this? I'm in a country where no Apple Store exists, has anyone taken their mac into an apple store?
Well after hours of heavy load with Cities Skylines I've yet to have any pops or crackles. Any distortion now is just natural lag. Hell I even watched the entirety of A New Hope on Disney+ and still nothing, and streaming services always caused the pops. So I think I'm good.
Thank you Boom 3D for fixing what Apple couldn't and wouldn't.
Thank you Boom 3D for fixing what Apple couldn't and wouldn't.
You're going to post how the pops and crackles are back..probably within the next day or two
The duality of man. Course mileage varies between us. But I have to ask what kind of speaker poppping moonpetal is having because this is the one I had before I installed Boom:
The noise my speakers make sounds identical to yours. I had a good maybe 4 days without any pops, but then they came back, even with Boom, though I do notice when I quit Boom that they are even more frequent, so it's doing something. It now seems I can make them go away for a day or so if I reboot and keep Boom running but who knows how long that will last 🙃
Well if Boom can handle heavily modded Cities Skylines for hours with multiple Firefox tabs and windows open and not once it popped or crackled, I think I'm good. Hope it lasts.
Course Boom 3D is only a workaround. CoreAudio is still broken and Apple needs to fix it, because this is unacceptable. We shouldn't need to buy a working audio driver for our $2000+ laptop, especially when this problem is exclusive to said $2000+ laptop
Last edited:
I been reading here for sometime, and just got the laptop for 5-6 months, been having cracking and popping for a long time with Spotify and most solution is just a short.
I downloaded Boom 3D and it just handle 1.5 days without cracking but it come back but more lesser than current issue.so far the best is restart and use Boom 3d combo
I also suspected Microsoft product but couldn't find the correct file to remove.
I downloaded Boom 3D and it just handle 1.5 days without cracking but it come back but more lesser than current issue.so far the best is restart and use Boom 3d combo
I also suspected Microsoft product but couldn't find the correct file to remove.
Boom stopped working for me as well, maybe 3-5 days after use 😭😭😭
This problem is just relentless.
On the apple subreddit on reddit I did read this encouraging post today on a thread there that talks about this issue:
So maybe we can hope for a fix soon...
This problem is just relentless.
On the apple subreddit on reddit I did read this encouraging post today on a thread there that talks about this issue:
So maybe we can hope for a fix soon...
Ok, please walk us through this still a bit better:
1. "checked the nature of certain activity relying on Intel with the activity monitor" - how do you do this in activity monitor? Is there a way to see Intel activity? If so, how? And how do we know which activities are related to audio and which are not?
2. "delete applications bound to those activities" - this makes sense if you can explain #1 better first
3. "check for remaining plug-ins still running after removal" - how do we find these plugins? Do we search for it on spotlight? Is there some other way to find the file path to these?
Thank you
Yeah good luck. I reported this issue back in February when I got the laptop. I've done so many ktraces, reported it so many times in the Feedback Assistant, told them exactly what the problem was, and every single engineer I talked to ghosted me when I sent the traces and pointed exactly where the problem was. Four times I did this and all four of those tickets are still open.
At this point you might as well just downgrade to a Macbook Air and have the Mac Studio be your powermac (pun intended) because they've known about this for 8 months and did nothing. The 2019 16 inch MBP got it's speaker crackle problem fixed a lot quicker than this.
I actually ditched my 2019 16in MBP largely due to this issue thinking there's no way in hell it would transfer over to the Apple Silicon. But nope!
So Apple is still having its 2018 own issue...
Back then some people let a black video youtube in the background to run and the popping was not occurring
Can you test this scenario as well to see if this is the exact same issue with the same exact fix?!
Back then some people let a black video youtube in the background to run and the popping was not occurring
Can you test this scenario as well to see if this is the exact same issue with the same exact fix?!
