WhatsApp Desktop For Mac Calls Have Disturbance And Interference To Audio After Updating To Sequoia

[mikey8811]

Hi

My desktop Whatsapp for Mac OS have had poor audio quality since updating to Sequoia. This is intermittent and has been going on for quite a while. The symptoms are a garbled sound and interference on voice calls.

I have updated it from the App Store but the issues persist. I have played with permission settings and still the same.

I reset parameters on my Mac, tested the microphone by recording audio on Quicktime and did aas much troubleshooting as I can on my own.

Has anybody experienced the same and if so how did you resolve it?

I have a friend who repairs Macs at a 3rd party store and he helped me do the troubleshooting. However, we both discovered that Facetime audio calls cannot be answered when I call him. He tries to answer the call and it just cuts off.

I used to be able to answer calls to my iPhone on my Mac but this no longer works now. It just cuts off.

I am using a 2019 iMac.

Thanks

 

[Bigwaff]

My desktop Whatsapp for Mac OS have had poor audio quality since updating to Sequoia. This is intermittent and has been going on for quite a while. The symptoms are a garbled sound and interference on voice calls.

Turn off Bluetooth. Do the audio issues persist?

 

[mikey8811]

Turn off Bluetooth. Do the audio issues persist?

Yes, tried that. Also, disconnected the bluetooth connected devices one by one. Same thing.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I think you have to see if it's some kind of weird effect of network traffic…DNS not working properly or one of the macOS network security features causing issues.

 

[mikey8811]

I think you have to see if it's some kind of weird effect of network traffic…DNS not working properly or one of the macOS network security features causing issues.

How would I do that?

 

[uacd]

Sequoia has been buggy for me too. I installed Sonoma instead on my MBA M1. Works very good so far.

For example, on Sequoia it takes 10 seconds to open Firefox, on Sonoma and older - just 1 or 2 at max. So there is definitely something weird going.

If you don’t rely on Sequoia features - downgrade. Or alternatively wait till macOS Tahoe comes out and update, it might fix these bugs

 

[mikey8811]

My 2019 Intel Mac is not supported on Tahoe.

How do I downgrade to Sonoma. I thought Apple stops signing the old packages and you cannot downgrade.

Mac OS has been buggy in many respects for quite a long time. Some external USB drives fail to index and files on them do not show up in. a Spotlight search. Spotlight itself does not work intermittently.

Apple certainly isn't what it used to be.

For this issue, I called Apple support and they weren't much help at all. They said Whatsapp is a 3rd party app and they cannot help there. For the Facetime issue they asked me to create a new user to test. The impression I got was everything is the user's fault and they try to do as little as possible to rectify the buggy software the pushed out as updates. They pretty much would like the customer to keep buying new hardware.

Sequoia has been buggy for me too. I installed Sonoma instead on my MBA M1. Works very good so far.

For example, on Sequoia it takes 10 seconds to open Firefox, on Sonoma and older - just 1 or 2 at max. So there is definitely something weird going.

If you don’t rely on Sequoia features - downgrade. Or alternatively wait till macOS Tahoe comes out and update, it might fix these bugs

 

[BrianBaughn]

How would I do that?

Try different DNS settings on your router and Mac. Your router may or may not have other settings that could affect Whatsapp traffic.

You could check to see if turning off "Private Wi-Fi address" in Network settings on your Mac makes a difference.

Not sure…but iCloud's "Private Relay" setting ON might be a factor.

I've turned all that off and use the Google DNS settings of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

Downgrading to Sonoma would be bailing and I don't even know if it would help your issue or not.

 

[uacd]

How do I downgrade to Sonoma. I thought Apple stops signing the old packages and you cannot downgrade.

Actually, not very complicated!
Apple stops signing only on iOS and iPad OS, on macOS there isn’t such thing and you can install any macOS that your Mac supports.

There are two ways to do that for your Mac. Easy and more complicated but straightforward. I suggest do it old way: restore ancient Mac OS and then install Sonoma update over it.

Start Internet Recovery by holding Shift+Option+CMD+R, then wipe the drive with disk utility, then install proposed macOS version. Then simply go to App Store, search “Sonoma”, click to download installer and then launch from Launchpad like app, from there it should automatically install everything.


2nd method is more complicated and requires you to download Sonoma from AppStore straight away, then create bootable USB installer via terminal. Then you boot off that USB drive by holding option for boot options and then wiping your SSD and clicking “Install macOS”. Here is more on this process on Apple website

 

[mikey8811]

Fortunately with the last Sequoia update that came out the same day as Tahoe, the issues went away. Hoping it stays that way

 

[mikey8811]

Fortunately with the last Sequoia update that came out the same day as Tahoe, the issues went away. Hoping it stays that way

OK I spoke too soon. 2 days after, the same problem occurred. Apple truly sucks nowadays

 

[BrianBaughn]

Is the macOS update the only step you've taken?

 

[mikey8811]

No, I created a new user and tested the Facetime call being unable to be picked up issue and the inability to pick up an iPhone call on the iMac. It was fine. My technician friend taught me how to restore default settings in Facetime, under Services Settings after going back to sing my original User ID. I did all this after the update. Then it worked. But the Whatsapp issue was resolved after the recent Sequoia update. 2 days later as I posted above, both reverted to not working. Ditto for Whatsapp which became noisy intermittently again. I repeated the default settings step detailed above and the Facetime and call answering on the iMac worked again. Basically, my technician friend said there was some process in Sequoia that overwrote the default settings. Everything worked fine before Sequoia. It is shoddy of Apple to push out an update that is buggy.

 

[bzgnyc2]

No, I created a new user and tested the Facetime call being unable to be picked up issue and the inability to pick up an iPhone call on the iMac. It was fine. My technician friend taught me how to restore default settings in Facetime, under Services Settings after going back to sing my original User ID. I did all this after the update. Then it worked. But the Whatsapp issue was resolved after the recent Sequoia update. 2 days later as I posted above, both reverted to not working. Ditto for Whatsapp which became noisy intermittently again. I repeated the default settings step detailed above and the Facetime and call answering on the iMac worked again. Basically, my technician friend said there was some process in Sequoia that overwrote the default settings. Everything worked fine before Sequoia. It is shoddy of Apple to push out an update that is buggy.

I am curious what are these default setting steps and do you happen to reboot or logout and login back in again to do them?

I've had an issue that sounds similar to yours on my MacBook Air 2020 (Intel) when it runs Catalina. At first I thought it was the app (most commonly it occurred in a browser so I thought it was a browser issue), but then found it could happen in any application. It just happened to occur in that app because that is the single most common application I ran (i.e. I was almost always in that browser as a gateway to everything else). I also found it correlates to high CPU load or memory. That is it most commonly starts after I've had things running for a while and memory leaks have consumed it all or some background web page gobbles 2 GB of RAM.

My impression is that late models Macs shifted away from smart devices with onboard processing to dumber devices with CPU-intense processing. Then in order to make the sound on a Mac sound good (and relative to the speakers and their placement it generally sounds very good), there's a lot of DSP going on. This seems like a good solution when it works but then it doesn't...

 

[mikey8811]

I am curious what are these default setting steps and do you happen to reboot or logout and login back in again to do them?

I've had an issue that sounds similar to yours on my MacBook Air 2020 (Intel) when it runs Catalina. At first I thought it was the app (most commonly it occurred in a browser so I thought it was a browser issue), but then found it could happen in any application. It just happened to occur in that app because that is the single most common application I ran (i.e. I was almost always in that browser as a gateway to everything else). I also found it correlates to high CPU load or memory. That is it most commonly starts after I've had things running for a while and memory leaks have consumed it all or some background web page gobbles 2 GB of RAM.

My impression is that late models Macs shifted away from smart devices with onboard processing to dumber devices with CPU-intense processing. Then in order to make the sound on a Mac sound good (and relative to the speakers and their placement it generally sounds very good), there's a lot of DSP going on. This seems like a good solution when it works but then it doesn't...

The default settings reset is under Facetime, Services Settings when you launch Facetime. There is a button called Reset To Default in the menu. I did that then restarted the computer. That's it.