The new MacBook Pro 16in (2022 version) may crackle or pop when playing audio. In this article, we'll cover the solution to this annoying problem.

As a web developer, I picked up the new MacBook Pro 16in. An incredible machine, but it came with a massive annoyance: a popping noise when playing audio.

This occurs seemingly randomly. I have a stack of dozens of apps, chrome tabs and extensions open at once, so there's no easy way to see if I can isolate it to a clash between driver and app. But regardless, this shouldn't be occurring on something that cost $4000+.

There's no official fix, but here's how to stop that annoying aspect of the Apple audio:

Open your terminal, paste this in, and hit return.

Enter the admin password, and hit return.

This will stop the Apple audio service for the machine, and relaunch it. It's basically a hard-reboot of the service without needing to shutdown the machine.

This fixes the crackling and popping noise for a while. But it's not a permanent solution. Instead, you'll need to run this every time to issue begins to occur.

There's no permanent solution currently - rebooting, reinstalling, or even buying a new one doesn't seem to do the trick.

Apple looks to be continually trying to patch this, fixing it for good, and it seems to be a software issue. Hardware wise - the MacBook Pro speakers are out of this world, and easily beat any other laptop I've had (alongside many standalone speakers as well).

But so far (at time of publication), there has been no "official" fix to the crackling and popping of the MacBook pro speakers.

Hope this helped!

More info:

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/132423