How to Fix Cracking and Popping Sound ?

This sound popping issues started happening with Xcode 12 and it has been months with no fix. Problem is that simulators (SwiftUi views are using them also) and the fact that phones do not have the same "sound" hardware a.k.k simulators actually change the output of the sound you hear in on your Mac (because they "simulate" it to show what the phone would do). Unfortunately this causes many many issues on the Mac sound hardware but is 100% fixable by the Xcode team, we cant do anything ourselves its a problem if the simulators "highjacking" the systems sounds and outputting it via a hardware that is not supposed to output this way.

This is mind boggling that it is still not fixed.

Sent to Apple ... (as Developer Feedback) and to APPLE (CEO) 

Get this problem FIXed Now to avoid a BIG Class action ... It is corrupting Mac Speakers ... And will cost Apple a lot!

Shortly after installing Catalina or Big Sur to MacBook Pro (and on many other Macs) … the speaker output becomes corrupted.

The same issue, described by numerous others in the above link, occurred with the Left speaker on my Mac. 
 
It occurred just after installing Catalina and Big Sur to a 2015 Vintage MacBook Pro development platform with a million bucks of important softwares. 

The sound control panel has been modified by Apple in these latest macOS releases. 

There is obvious serious trouble with it.

The speaker balance slider in the sound control panel was defaulted all of the way over to the Left when I first looked at it, (which was odd after installingl these macOS’.) 

I expected the balance to be centered by default.

It kept jumping back to full left whenever I attempted to adjust it to the middle.

I strongly suspect a macOS cause of a hardware flaw or outright breakage.

 (Hopefully not an intentional malicious and nefarious act on Apple's part to get folks to go out an upgrade their machines.) 

A prior Apple macOS software update wrecked my MacOS keyboard at one point in the past.

Apple did a recall that machine and I got them to fix it after lots of consternation and denial and resistance from Apple. 

(A speaker repair costs around $600.) 

I have been a Apple developer for 30 years. 

Catalina actually affected my photos where I could only see grey boxes so Apple tech recommended I update to Big Sur, so I did. It was unfortunate that I ever updated to Catalina in the first place as that is where my problem on my Macbook pro 2013 started.
As far as the internal speaker distortion, it is my right speaker. The bottom line is Apple can't fix it. I was on the phone with tech support for at least 1 hour yesterday and she tried over 10 different potential fixes. Nothing worked. Then she said the only other thing you can do is go to an Apple certified repair store as it is a hardware problem. No way I'm spending money to fix my speaker because it was caused by the update. So she set me up with tech support today to reinstall Big Sur. Didn't solve the problem. They either can't or won't. I think it's the later.
Apple needs to be better. Making more money by creating issues so we have to spend more money is part of their strategy, e.g. the version of iphone that came out that we could no longer charge and plug in ear buds at the same time. Forced a lot of people to buy bluetooth earbuds. I refuse. As someone else said in an earlier reply, I'm surprised a class action lawsuit hasn't been filed against Apple yet. Consumer protection would be a next good step.

Plenty of attorneys will be very pleased to take on a case like this one (pro bono). Someone must force Apple to recall and repair, or replace, our gear since they are the ones that cause the problems to our machines through their shoddy software releases, half-baked workmanship, derelict change management, and poor internal quality control measures.

Apple uses us as testers to help discover their own flaws, as they destroy our machines with their corrupt business practices, while trying to make more money off us 20 million + developers. It is just wrong and needs to be pointed-out publicly in order to get their attention and get fast action to resolve these problems! Otherwise, they just deny a problem's existence and never admit it's their fault. Apple delays doing anything about issues, as long as possible, until it burgeons and festers and propagates like COVID.

I've had the exact same issue for months and months now. Interestingly, I occasionally get little bits of crackling even when the simulator isn't running - just when I have a lot of processes like playing a youtube video along with having other tabs and apps open - so it seems to be something that happens with lots of processing going in general. And the crackling continues if I plug in my headphones, meaning it's not a speaker issue it's something deeper (as the terminal bandaid / temporary fixes other people have posted imply).

Mine crackles with or without the simulator running. The only time it does not crackle is listening to sound through headphones via Bluetooth connection.

Running Version 11.1 of Big Sur..... the popping sound issues still exists!

Unreal Apple. I just moved over to the 16 "MBP since my 15 MBP (2017) has the butterfly keyboard issue. Now with this new MBP 16, I have experienced this sound popping issue from the onset. #unacceptable

What's wrong with this company putting out this garbage? I have to replace my Apple products every 2-3 years. What a racket!

I have a MacBook Air 2019 and after I downloaded Big Sur my computer is facing more of these sound problems. Especially when I am in school and my teacher is speaking.

have this issue with new m1 mac book pro :( sad to see how long this has been an issue.. didn't expect to have such a terrible issue on my first mac in ten years... what happened to apple quality i hear about all the time, on this issue here?

I've also tried many suggestions people had in this thread but none of them seem to resolve it. Please help!

I have the same issue with Xcode running. I need to reboot the system to get rid of this issue for a while

If anything, it has happened to me several times, but as soon as I close iOS simulator the problem stops. This time I opened 2 simulators at once while being on a google chrome meet session. Macbook pro 16 2020 Hope its fixed soon!

This ridiculous problem is caused by macOS's coreaudiod service restarting itself. When will Apple fix this? Never. Because Apple no longer cares about users!

Best solution around this so far for me is restarting Coreaudio serviecs. Found this code on Github. Might be useful >>

https://gist.github.com/felipecsl/5177790

Code Block 
sudo kill `ps -ax | grep 'coreaudiod' | grep 'sbin' |awk '{print $1}'`

OR

Code Block 
sudo pkill coreaudiod

i am facing the same issue.

I think this might be an operating system problem related to resource allocation, maybe alignment.

I see the following consistently (You may think this is an Ableton problem, but hear me out).

1. Everything is fine. I search "Relaxing Music" on Youtube and play this "24/7" video. Thick pads. Sweet. Let it play as I continue. (seriously, pick something relaxing)

2. I start a new Live Set (empty project)

3. I go into Live's audio preferences and set the Buffer Size in Latency settings in Ableton Live to 32 samples (the default is 512).

4. I hear some crackling in my Youtube sound right when the change is made, not much, and it stops after a bit, I think.

5. I set the buffer size back to 512 and it goes away completely.

6. I open a Live Set that has 8 tracks of Spitfire Studio Strings.

7. I set the buffer size back to 32. (Note, I am still not playing anything in Live)

8. I hear lots of crackling that continues. (Alternate adventure: at this point, I could exit Live and it would stop the crackling. Open the project again, back to crackling)

9. Change the buffer size back to 512.

10. Zero crackling. (continue playing relaxing music for a while)