As a HW designer who over the years has deal with many HW bugs, it’s amusing to see how almost everybody is agreeing that it’s a software issue “because it goes away when I restart or when I close this or that application…”

As if SW applications that stress the system in some way are capable of triggering a HW bug?

And if the issue eventually does get solved with a SW update, then it most definitely was a SW bug, because software update that work around a HW bug aren’t a thing.

> because software update that work around a HW bug aren’t a thing.

This definitely isn't true. We have seen microcode updates that work around buggy CPUs before. Often by taking a slow path for buggy cases. For example there were microcode updates to "fix" (moderately mitigate) Specter and Meltdown which were almost certainly hardware bugs.

I believe he was being sarcastic.

The audio hardware is integrated into the M1 SoC, so if this was a hardware issue I guess it would also affect iPads, right?

Who knows?

I’ve seen cases where a functional block of an SOC got used one generation to the next without even seeing an issue.

And then suddenly, due to changing boundary conditions, a bug got triggered.

I’ve similarly seen cases where HW bugs were known but SW workarounds where calculates to reduce the chances of them manifesting themselves to be low enough. Until they suddenly didn’t.

The state space of HW is incredible, and it’s often not possible to foresee or understand the interactions between of SW and HW.

I constantly had this problem on my Intel MacBook Pro whenever I'd run the iOS simulator (YouTube would crackle and pop, closing the iOS simulator in the background would fix it).

I've observed this but very rarely on my M1 MBP, I wonder if there's some code from iOS in the M1 OS that causes this, or it's caused by running iOS (which are now first-class citizens) or Catalyst apps.

I experience this and have this exact model, and it is a mostly software issue. I don’t get this problem when my computer isn’t doing much, but when I’m using a ton of CPU, the crackling begins.

It isn’t a problem when connected to my AirPods, so I just pop them in when I’m doing some heavy work.

Annoying, but not a deal breaker for me.

I have this MBP too and I experience this crackling noise too, only when watching a video though. And I never, ever use a ton of CPU, so I doubt this is caused by the CPU having a high usage. First time it happened, I was scared as I thought I broke something, but now I kinda got used to it, unfortunately.

While it seems to only be a temporary fix, the steps in this comment have fixed it for me so far: https://reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/qmpg3k/_/hw9zmgm/

I’m surprised Apple users put up with this. It’s supposed to be a premium experience.

Makes you wonder if this is something every user experiences or some weird corner case.

Seems Apple forgets old bugs after a few years. I recall having crackling audio on my 2015 Macbook pro which was fixed within weeks after release, but required a SMC reset to kill the old code messing with the audio...

Every platform comes with tradeoffs, it’s just a matter of what you can live with. There is no silver bullet.

As someone who works with macOS, Windows, and Linux regularly, macOS works the best for me as general-purpose/daily-driver, with the other two filling more single-purpose use cases.

They are complaining about it… That’s why it’s here on the front page of HN.

I get crackling on my M1 MBP 14 and now that I know it's there it's always very noticeable and distracting. I'm not buying any Apple MBPs in the future while this still happens. Even then depending on how long it takes Apple to acknowledge and fix it, I might not still.

I have had this happen in several different macbooks. I just stop and restart the sound card in terminal to fix it. It's annoying to do every couple days, but it only takes a few moments.

My 2021 MFG i9 MacBook Pro, that I run in bootcamp exclusively, was popping and cracking before I updated to the the current macOS.