Why do my speakers pop/crackle under heavy memory load?

[bdawwg]

I've been experiencing popping speakers on my latest gen MBP 14" 16gb mem. Seeing a forum post, I've been able to isolate it to an issue that occurs when the machine is under heavier memory load (yellow/orange in activity monitor), where memory swap is occuring.

Why does this happen? Is there anything I can do about it? To me, this settles any debate about whether its worth it to buy the higher memory machines.

 

[Calaveras]

I've noticed this as well.
For example If I am batching raw images with Adobe Bridge and Photoshop It will take a while to churn through a large number of 26MP photos. So I often open Disney+ or Youtube and watch something while it runs.
It will crackle or drop out audio. It sounds like it's giving low priority to audio playback, so that heavy data throughput continues without slowdown.
However when I look in activity Monitor nothing is topping our. Not memory, network or CPU.

It also happens every single time I open a large project in Premiere, Logic, Photoshop etc. while audio is playing back by iTunes (I know, I know I still call it that I don't care) or I may have Ted talk playing on Youtube while I work.

 

[jav6454]

That's an odd behavior. I wouldn't think memory pressure has to do with speakers.

 

[MisterSavage]

Not sure if this is relevant to you, but quitting the Xcode simulator can stop this sometimes.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I've been experiencing popping speakers on my latest gen MBP 14" 16gb mem. Seeing a forum post, I've been able to isolate it to an issue that occurs when the machine is under heavier memory load (yellow/orange in activity monitor), where memory swap is occuring.

Why does this happen? Is there anything I can do about it? To me, this settles any debate about whether its worth it to buy the higher memory machines.

It's not the memory that's the problem. It's CoreAudio. macOS's default audio driver has been broken for months and Apple has done nothing to fix it.

Try using Boom 3D and see if that fixes it. It fixed the problem for me and many others with the same problem. https://www.globaldelight.com/boom/