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Some 2018 MacBook Pro Owners Experiencing Crackling Speakers
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Well, there are some USB DACs that cost 2x the top spec MBP (e.g. Chord Electronics DAVE which costs $13000 USD BTW) so a 100 - 200 extra isn't really a huge deal. Anyways, you can get a run of the mill DACs for $23 at Amazon as a temporary solution
That's what I did with a new Dell XPS running Linux. I'm just gonna keep my 2014 MBP around for compiling iOS versions of my customers' apps.
Phil Schiller: "To finalize feature parity between platforms, we decided to bring fart apps - the most popular iOS app category - to MacOS.
This aligns with our strategy to kick our developers out of business, as we do with music, news, maps, productivity, cloud services and any other area
Therefore we've decided to bring the best of this category in - free and unsolicited.
Most customers even don't know how much they need the best features. - so we prevented 3rd party quick repair.
To reduce impact on system resources, we reserve the right to throttle this feature in the future,
while tight integration with the TouchBar can be expected soon - but not before 2025."
This aligns with our strategy to kick our developers out of business, as we do with music, news, maps, productivity, cloud services and any other area
Therefore we've decided to bring the best of this category in - free and unsolicited.
Most customers even don't know how much they need the best features. - so we prevented 3rd party quick repair.
To reduce impact on system resources, we reserve the right to throttle this feature in the future,
while tight integration with the TouchBar can be expected soon - but not before 2025."
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VLC is having big troubles. I have the latest on one a mini running High Sierra...I may try to run that one back to Snow Leopard - it's just connected to my TV...and the video is constantly freezing for fractions of a second. It will do it dozens of times in the first few minutes of a video and then calm down a bit after that. Sometimes it will freeze for many seconds. The audio is always OK. It just keeps playing. With a previous version of VLC (like up to a couple months ago) the video would go all grey and then slowly fill back in until the scene or camera angle changed then it would be back to normal. It would do that several times during a video. I think that's an MP4 thing like when your satellite TV loses signal for a bit. I was sorta like that. It seems like it started that grey screen thing about a year ago. Now it just freezes.
It’s also because they all come with dGPUs now where the mid-2015 came with the integrated Iris with 128 MB eDRAM L4 cache aka Crystalwell. I actually think Intel was on to something great with this but I guess the cost of that RAM wasn’t worth it when most of these i7 CPUs were going to the paired with dGPUs anyway. MS added 32MB of ESRAM to their Xbox Ones and this was what made them competitive with the PS4. The Xbox shipped with 8GB of standard DDR3 while the PS4 shipped with 8GB of GDDR5. That’s a huge difference in bandwidth but the ESRAM closes some of the gap.
And custom high speed NVME SSDs are not cheap. This isn’t the hard drive era.
Yep. While many complain that SSDs are cheaper now those are the 500MB/s variety. It’s true many people would sacrifice speed for storage but I think the faster the better.
You all must realize, the issue is a software problem, not a hardware problem with the physical speakers. I was having the problems on my iMac Pro, and it would happen with internet radio, Facebook videos, and various web-based videos. The problem was not just Flash-based audio. Since updating to 10.14 Mojave, the problem is virtually GONE. I have not had any recurrence of the "distorted audio buzz" issue since updating to 10.14!
I am not having crackling speakers on mine, however when I play a song on my iTunes iCloud library after a few seconds of playing it goes to the next song and rinse wash repeat... Anyone know of what could be going on here?
Another day another problem with a recent Apple product. I especially like how at the bottom of the article about problems with a product, is MacRumor's advice about that product:
Buyer's Guide: MacBook Pro (Buy Now)
Buy now. Yeah, right. Sure. Great idea. Then I too can have to figure out workarounds for Apple's screw-ups.
Buyer's Guide: MacBook Pro (Buy Now)
Buy now. Yeah, right. Sure. Great idea. Then I too can have to figure out workarounds for Apple's screw-ups.
Following the release of 2018 MacBook Pro models last month, some customers have turned to the MacRumors Forums, Apple Support Communities, Reddit, and YouTube to report intermittent crackling from the built-in speakers.
The crackling appears to occur spontaneously during audio playback on both 13-inch and 15-inch models, based on a handful of videos shared by customers. As with many crowdsourced issues, there are a lot of variables involved, making it difficult to pinpoint exactly what may be causing the problem.
Some customers appear to experience the issue while playing music in iTunes, while others are affected when using GarageBand, or playing a YouTube video. Some users also hear the crackling when running Windows via Boot Camp. It's unclear if the crackling is limited to specific volumes or frequencies.
MacRumors forum members have speculated about possible causes, including radio interference due to a lack of shielding, audio drivers, and the T2 chip.
A few years ago, some customers experienced similar crackling from the built-in speakers on the 2016 MacBook Pro, oftentimes when running Windows via Boot Camp. The crackling was so loud that it often permanently damaged the speakers, resulting in the MacBook Pro needing to be repaired or replaced.
Within days, Apple acknowledged the issues in a support document, and released updated audio drivers for Boot Camp with a fix:The speaker issues with the 2018 MacBook Pro don't appear to be as dire, or nearly as widespread, but enough complaints have surfaced that we wanted to bring some attention to the matter in the interest of those affected.
At least one user claims the issue may have been fixed in the latest macOS Mojave betas, which is unconfirmed. Another user claimed that Apple engineers are looking into the matter. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
Of course, in a production run of millions of new MacBook Pro units, a small percentage may have defective speakers, but this does appear to be an actual issue that hopefully can be or has been addressed in a future software update.
If you are affected by this issue, we recommend contacting Apple Support. In the meantime, some users have shared potential workarounds, such as resetting the System Management Controller and NVRAM, disabling Hey Siri, or simply rebooting, but these solutions may not be ideal or work for everyone.
Article Link: Some 2018 MacBook Pro Owners Experiencing Crackling Speakers
i have had this issue and its been non stop. I have been practically living at the apple store due to the face that it occured a few days after receiving my new 15 inch 2018 Mac Pro. I then went in and was told that all diagnostics were fine and that it was either a corrupt time machine back OR i was using a third party app that had issues. I was told to update all my apps ( which were already ) and go home and see if it happens again. Fast forward 4 days later it was still happening and i went to apple and they gave me a brand new replacement laptop. The guy told me that it was all looking good on his end regarding tests etc and i proceeded to go home and install my time machine back up only to wake up the next day jump on my new computer and bam , crackling speakers again. Contacted apple support and they told me that its probably my time machine and they told me to reset my SMC settings. I did that and thought it was fixed until yesterday when it started happening again while listening to iTunes. Back to square 1 and got absolutely NO clue what to do now.
Just Apple. For the record, I don’t use Microsoft or Linux, so that would be irrelevant in this case.
I'm not using Time Machine and I'm get the crackling sound using YouTube, Facebook and my Ableton Live. I called Apple Support and they had me reset my SMC settings which helped for 20 minutes and now I back to crackling. I just replaced my previous 2018 15" Macbook Pro because it was having flickering screen and slow track pad issues. Now crackling sound. Not good luck for me or a wide spread issue. Might have to return it again. Hoping it's just a software update issue. Really disappointed with the new Macbook Pro bugs/issues.
when I received mine yesterday I immediately checked the audio MIDI setup and found the output default is 48,000, no issues till today it happened to me when my Mac under heavy load, I went back to the midi output and found it changed to 44,100 after opening garagband. I set it a gain to 48,000 and its fine now.
Obviously software bug !
hopefully apple to fix it as soon as possible
Happened to me just now. Interestingly, I have several bluetooth devices attached and my keyboard blanked out on me at the same time.
Stopping iTunes and starting again seemed to work. But dropping 4K on a computer and having the speakers not work is not fantastic. Hope they fix this in an update soon.
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This happened to me, but it may have actually been Adobe Audition doing it. I often work in 44,100 there. Hmmmmmmmm
Stopping iTunes and starting again seemed to work. But dropping 4K on a computer and having the speakers not work is not fantastic. Hope they fix this in an update soon.
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This happened to me, but it may have actually been Adobe Audition doing it. I often work in 44,100 there. Hmmmmmmmm
Turn down the master fader within iTunes.....I was having the same issues. Listening to music with my MacBook Pros volume at 20% and iTunes master at 100%. Turn down your master and raise your MacBooks volume bar.
This stops the overloading of the speakers. Still may be a fault in design but this stops the crackling.
This stops the overloading of the speakers. Still may be a fault in design but this stops the crackling.
this is untrue, and NVME SSD's are extremely cheap these days are are featured in most of the competition.
Samsung EVO 970's that are capable of 3000+mbps reads and 1800mbps writes are < $200 for 500GB. (I just bought two). My 2017 Razer Blade Stealth came with an NVME also capable of the same speeds (Its probably a samsung as well).
Apple's upgrades though have always been expensive though for comparison o the rest of the market and shouldn't be a surprise at this point to anyone
This is certainly cheaper than before. Still this is how Apple has always priced options. If someone wants a Mac there is nothing they can do. At least they’re not using slow stuff.
To be fair, not only Apple does this. Look at the car market. You can get a 300hp Mustang for under $30k but if you want 300hp in a German car it will cost you $50k. Ok, the overall construction and quality of components is higher in these German cars but when it comes to effective straight line acceleration, there is no difference.
Now about the keyboard. I have a 2016 15” and I can say the silicone keyboard is a huge improvement without a doubt. It feels even more stable and I could type even faster and without mistakes on it. So good that if I really needed the power from two add’l cores, I would sell mine and upgrade just for that alone. As it stands it’s not worth it for me to take a $1500 hit and spend $1800 w/AppleCare to buy a new one.