Audio stutters with USB Dacs on Macbook M1 Pro

[pengin15]

Yep, Sonoma Beta 2 seems to do the job. Better late than never... and hopefully, they won't mess it up in the final release...

I've been on too many Mac beta over the years to know that they do mess up sometimes...but now that we know that the issue is entirely fixable by software, the only thing we can do is to keep a close watch on subsequent betas and--the moment they slip up--inundate them with a torrential downpour of audiophile smack talk

 

[IHeartAudio]

I've been on too many Mac beta over the years to know that they do mess up sometimes...but now that we know that the issue is entirely fixable by software, the only thing we can do is to keep a close watch on subsequent betas and--the moment they slip up--inundate them with a torrential downpour of audiophile smack talk

Luckily, my DAW and plugins have had no issues with Sonoma beta. I was afraid because of what I've always heard about Mac betas. Chrome Beta doesn't work for me on Sonoma but Chrome stable and Chrome Canary do. Only problem I've seen so far.

 

[Bigsy]

I put on new Sonoma beta 3 straight from Ventura this morning - couple of hours listening with no skips or stutters. Sonoma has fixed it for me

 

[thrillho]

yep, came to post same thing. beta 3 updated and all is good in the hood.

 

[IHeartAudio]

yep, came to post same thing. beta 3 updated and all is good in the hood.

Yep. I've moved to Beta 3 and everything is still running great.

 

[Veri]

I'd like to upgrade but my mac is my employer's, my work laptop. Better wait for the stable release I guess

 

[pengin15]

I'd like to upgrade but my mac is my employer's, my work laptop. Better wait for the stable release I guess

I'd say wait for the full release if you can. One drawback of the beta is that it runs ever so slightly warmer than Ventura (granted, it's still Apple Silicon-cool of 52C from the usual 45C, but still)

 

[Bigsy]

No difference for me in temp still sitting at my usual 48C, Its very easy to instal the beta to another partition and switch between holding esc on start, that way make sure everything you need works before doing a full switch

 

[paperbagboi]

Yep. I've moved to Beta 3 and everything is still running great.

Me too Sonoma beta 3 with 100+ tabs open on safari, photoshop, illustator open spotify. No more audio dropouts on my Native instruments Traktor S4 (audio interface). Will see in the next few days if it will get back.

Hope this helps.

Thank you guys for your helpful info on this thread!

 

[voodooless]

I'd say wait for the full release if you can. One drawback of the beta is that it runs ever so slightly warmer than Ventura (granted, it's still Apple Silicon-cool of 52C from the usual 45C, but still)

I haven't done any beta updates:

Though that's with the lid closed and shoved underneath the monitor stand

.. now I'm scared though that the update might break USB audio since I've never had any issues with current and past versions

 

[Veri]

.. now I'm scared though that the update might break USB audio since I've never had any issues with current and past versions

It won't

 

[alye]

This is great news, thanks for the updates.

 

[jayadubya]

I'm on 48, but with 16GB RAM.


What's the best way to go about and do this? Is this a different pipeline from Feedback Assistant? Might be worth the try.

On the same note, I'd also recommend sending an email to Craig Federighi - we've had instances where some people are successful in pushing their issues in. The chances are obviously very slim, but I'd think the more noise we make, the better our chances are that they'd bother to go and fix this issue.

EDIT:

I chatted with Apple Support earlier. My case ID was 102016746301. I took the chance to also mention my Feedback Assistant submission IDs FB12270689 and FB12192422. I'd recommend also reaching out to Apple Support mentioning my case ID and @jayadubya 's (101946331698) so they can have a clear and centralized understanding of this issue.

Please do submit a ticket. The more complaints they have on this, the better...

I was having a great time chatting with apple support, then it went over to "engineering" and it's been radio silence since then. Sadness!

 

[jayadubya]

I wonder what percentage of people on M1 Macs are using external USB DACs? Seeing how most of the discussion on this issue is on audio forums, but very little can be found on MacRumors or the Apple Support forum, I’m guessing a fairly small number. Most are probably listening on Airpods, HomePods, or some sort of Bluetooth speaker, none of which are exhibiting this problem. That might explain the lack of a solution after a year or more.

That's exactly what I think the issue is as well. Many DACs have bluetooth, and I think most users would just opt for that over a wired connection. But serious musicians, audio mixers, technicians, editors, and audiophiles... gotta be a few thousand of those!

 

[jayadubya]

Not sure if it has been mentioned in the thread but in Terminal with the simple command:

sudo purge

Will reset your RAM instantly. I still need to do this on my M2 when I let Roon run for more than a day which will suck up 20GB+ of memory making the system sluggish.

Sudo Purge was also my drag name in college. Neat!

But in all seriousness, I did do this, and when I have audio playing there's a 'click' that I hear, then audio continues. Watching Activity Monitor, however, I don't see any change in the memory pressure.

 

[jayadubya]

Just a bit of update on my part. I'm still using the DX3 Pro on a 16" M1 Pro with 16GB RAM. I updated my system to 13.4.1 yesterday, and while this could be a placebo effect, I've been using Apple Music for the past 2 hours down with only a skip or two at 72% memory pressure. Usually by the time I go above 70%, all audio stutters like mad.

Anyone else experienced a slight improvement in 13.4.1? I sure hope this is an improvement, even if it's not a total fix.

I think there is a minor improvement under certain situations, but it always comes back. If I fully shut down chrome then re-open, and keep the window count low it's fairly stable. But it feels like I'm using windows 3.1 at that point!

 

[jayadubya]

Excited to hear this about the Sonoma Beta! It makes a lot of sense that they'd be able to do a hot fix to at least try to tackle this in the beta program.

I had it installed while I was working with the apple support tech and he said, not surprisingly, that they wouldn't be able to do any tech support if I was in the beta (but he acknowledged it was a good idea to try it!). I had to back out of the beta, which it turns out requires a firmware re-write! It's non-trivial to back out of a beta, FYI. I had to go into a genius bar where they did a re-flash of the firmware. So weird.

But now I'm feeling like the risk is worth the reward!

 

[Zensō]

Excited to hear this about the Sonoma Beta! It makes a lot of sense that they'd be able to do a hot fix to at least try to tackle this in the beta program.

I had it installed while I was working with the apple support tech and he said, not surprisingly, that they wouldn't be able to do any tech support if I was in the beta (but he acknowledged it was a good idea to try it!). I had to back out of the beta, which it turns out requires a firmware re-write! It's non-trivial to back out of a beta, FYI. I had to go into a genius bar where they did a re-flash of the firmware. So weird.

But now I'm feeling like the risk is worth the reward!

I use SoundSource to host Sonarworks and CanOpener, but it doesn’t run on the beta, so I’ll have to wait until the public release is out this fall.

 

[pengin15]

Excited to hear this about the Sonoma Beta! It makes a lot of sense that they'd be able to do a hot fix to at least try to tackle this in the beta program.

I had it installed while I was working with the apple support tech and he said, not surprisingly, that they wouldn't be able to do any tech support if I was in the beta (but he acknowledged it was a good idea to try it!). I had to back out of the beta, which it turns out requires a firmware re-write! It's non-trivial to back out of a beta, FYI. I had to go into a genius bar where they did a re-flash of the firmware. So weird.

But now I'm feeling like the risk is worth the reward!

For what it's worth, Sonoma (at least as of the current beta) had completely fixed the issue for me. It also helps that it's remarkably stable as a beta (on account of not having too many new features, thankfully. We don't need too much "creativity" on Mac...), with the exception of one very annoying Microsoft Word bug that most people shouldn't be encountering.

 

[jayadubya]

For what it's worth, Sonoma (at least as of the current beta) had completely fixed the issue for me. It also helps that it's remarkably stable as a beta (on account of not having too many new features, thankfully. We don't need too much "creativity" on Mac...), with the exception of one very annoying Microsoft Word bug that most people shouldn't be encountering.

Very much like, and now 3 hours into Sonoma I have had zero stutters. It looks like they tackled this!

I will be interested to see if I'm still having issues with my USB external keyboard, which was periodically disconnecting, while connected. Fingers crossed!

Is that that end of this thread? Oh no!