Audio stutters with USB Dacs on Macbook M1 Pro

[Ulfgard]

I've been following this thread as I've been pulling my hair out with my new SMSL c200 DAC with 2021 MBP M1 Pro and the stutters.

I've plugged in my older Audioengine D1 and I'm not getting any stutters at all? Could this be a USB1 vs USB2 thing?

Anyone think of a reason why this would work?

I suspect it’s an USB2 issue. From hearsay, USB1 devices seem to always work. My Qudelix5K (which is USB3.something) works. Other USB3.something DACs don’t, though. USB1 seems to be the safest choice for DACs on M1 Mac.

 

[eelpout]

back when I started having this issue on my then new MBP M1 Pro using Big Sur, on a Reddit thread (or maybe MacRumors, can't remember now) someone mentioned a tiny application called MacClickFixus. it was created to keep the audio bus open continuously for people having issues with audio click and pop noises when the interface is initialized.

back then anyway, keeping it running completely fixed the external DAC dropout problem for me. sadly though, it doesn't seem to work anymore after one of the Ventura updates. it's also an Intel binary (that's what I have), so maybe the added layer of Rosetta doesn't help.

the binary is still out there if people want to give it a go: macClickFixus.app.zip - Google Drive

no, I'm not the author of it.

 

[quasieuro]

Just to say that the SoundSource solution presented by @acbarn seems to have worked for me--at least day 1 has been very promising.

 

[etny]

So I bought the Insignia HDMI Audio Extractor instead. Amazon delayed my order and made me dig around a little more and I preferred the Insignia due to it using micro-USB rather than a barrel plug charger. I have a ton of micro USB cables and USB-C to micro USB adapters which I highly prefer over barrel plugs as USB Hubs, monitors, TVs etc can all power the Insignia.

My M1 Pro MacBook is pretty slammed right now and hasn't skipped a beat. Normally if I'm this high on memory usage, I can force audio drops by just scrolling on a page or swapping tabs.

2 weeks into it, not a single stutter. Problem solved (as far as I'm concerned).

 

[nlappas]

Same issue here with my 14" M1 Macbook Pro 16 Gb. When Memory used exceeds 14Gb, then audio stutters begin. If I kill the window server and memory goes below 14Gb, then issue goes away temporarily.

I mitigated the issue for now by using the Macbook audio jack (bought an audio jack to optical converter -analog to digital-) instead of the USB DAC.

How on earth did Apple miss this issue with all these music producers/DJs working on Macs?

 

[Axo1989]

Same issue here with my 14" M1 Macbook Pro 16 Gb. When Memory used exceeds 14Gb, then audio stutters begin. If I kill the window server and memory goes below 14Gb, then issue goes away temporarily.

I mitigated the issue for now by using the Macbook audio jack (bought an audio jack to optical converter -analog to digital-) instead of the USB DAC.

How on earth did Apple miss this issue with all these music producers/DJs working on Macs?

I thought the point of the 14/16" pro models was being able to order 96 GB RAM.

More seriously I wonder about that last question also. Maybe the problem doesn't show up using Logic Pro (or other DAWs etc) that assert higher priority than mere audio players. Anyone know?

*it was probably 64 GB on the M1. My M2 13" is maxed out at 24 GB, sadly (I wanted the Touch Bar that much).

 

[Zensō]

I thought the point of the 14/16" pro models was being able to order 96 GB RAM.

More seriously I wonder about that last question also. Maybe the problem doesn't show up using Logic Pro (or other DAWs etc) that assert higher priority than mere audio players. Anyone know?

*it was probably 64 GB on the M1. My M2 13" is maxed out at 24 GB, sadly (I wanted the Touch Bar that much).

I’ve pretty much resolved this with Soundsource as outlined earlier in the thread. Prior to that, I only had stutters playing from either Apple Music or various music players within Safari (SoundCloud, Bandcamp, etc). Ableton Live and Logic have never had this issue on my system.

 

[Ulfgard]

Here's another positive review of Soundsource. After the rather cumbersome installation, the audio clicks were noticeably shorter. After increasing the audio priority, they seem to have completely disappeared.

Apart from resolving this annoying issue, I can now set per application volume settings and my media keys work for my DAC as well.

 

[Veri]

Here's another positive review of Soundsource. After the rather cumbersome installation, the audio clicks were noticeably shorter. After increasing the audio priority, they seem to have completely disappeared.

I love SoundSource also to include audio unit VSTs or autoEQ and all that jazz, great plug-in.

 

[Ulfgard]

I love SoundSource also to include audio unit VSTs or autoEQ and all that jazz, great plug-in.

Do you have any practical use case for that? I'm pretty happy with the way my T1s sound, so I don't even bother with the headphone EQs (which are admittedly nice to have)

 

[Veri]

Do you have any practical use case for that? I'm pretty happy with the way my T1s sound, so I don't even bother with the headphone EQs (which are admittedly nice to have)

Well in OS X you have AU N-Band which is a system EQ plug-in for which I already had a bunch of presets which I can just enable systemwide through SoundSource with a single toggle press. Love it.

Others might have a bigger collection of such audio units.. like pricy EQ tools, vinyl emulator, compressors or saturator all those things..!

 

[Ulfgard]

Update: After a couple of hours working with the system, the stutters are back. They're certainly less than before installing Soundsource, alas my previous impression of it resolving of the issue was wrong.

 

[jayadubya]

I've been following this thread as I've been pulling my hair out with my new SMSL c200 DAC with 2021 MBP M1 Pro and the stutters.

I've plugged in my older Audioengine D1 and I'm not getting any stutters at all? Could this be a USB1 vs USB2 thing?

Anyone think of a reason why this would work?

That's an interesting situation... I know my FiiO K7 has a ridiculous USB A plug, which makes me think it's inferior somehow. But I get the exact same issues when I plug either my FiiO BTR7 or BTR5 directly into the MacBook. It also happened with previous DACs that I tried.

You haven't been able to replicate the skipping at all on the AE D1, @raygun ?

 

[jayadubya]

I've still been waiting for Apple Customer Support to get back to me. It's been a bit of a Sh!tshow, honestly. They promise to tackle an issue, offer a direct contact, and then they just fade away. Not what I expected from Apple.

For now, I've just been plugging directly into the 3.5mm jack on the MB Pro, and I have to say it sounds pretty good. The bass and clarity isn't the same as the K7, so I this isn't the right outcome. It seems eminently addressable with a patch, or even a dev tool that can better protect the audio drivers/performance during high memory pressure situations. What a stupid mess.

 

[vurt]

Hi everyone, I registered to keep track of this discussion here. I'm facing the same frustrating issue with a Questyle M15 DAC and 2021 M1 Pro MacBook Pro with 16GB ram.

I followed the tip from @DWPress to use Soundsource. That worked for a day but the skip is back, a lil bit less frequent but still there. I'm not even approaching yellow Memory Pressure.

It's incredibly frustrating.

On top of that, no one in the M15 thread on Head-Fi seems to be reporting the same, and only this thread came up when I googled!

 

[theREALdotnet]

I’m using a Mac mini M1 with 16GB RAM and don’t have any playback issues. My current music player is Audirvana, but I’ve also used Roon in the past. The audio output device I’m using now is Dirac Virtual Audio Device, previously I’ve used Element with Blackhole and various DSP plugins (incl. Dirac Live Processor), or HLConvolver with Blackhole. Final output is to USB DACs.

My Mac is dedicated to music playback, and the CPU load is aways very low, as is the memory pressure. Even so, I have found a way of making the drop-out/stuttering issue appear, simply be reducing the buffer size in Dirac Live Processor. With all the devices mentioned above, when I set them up and configure sample rate and buffer size, I always set the buffer size to max, typically 2048 samples. This is probably why I never encountered the issue before. If I drop this to, say, 512 then the audio issues start popping up. They are always accompanied by “HALS_OverloadMessage” messages logged by coreaudiod, as seen in console.app.

There seems to be a low-level bug in this architecture, perhaps to do with interrupt scheduling, that causes some buffers to over- or underrun occasionally. I hope that Apple can identify and fix this. In the meantime, using 2048 sample buffer sizes seems to provide stability, at least it does for me. I suppose the Jitter Cleaner style devices do the same, by buffering USB data.

 

[DWPress]

I followed the tip from @DWPress to use Soundsource.

Soundsource doesn't really give you much control over the sample buffer with just 3 vague choices. Routing your audio through some sort of host and using a higher buffer as @theREALdotnet suggests is far more foolproof and I can verify his results. Using 2048 samples does not cause noticeable lip synch issues for video btw.

 

[vurt]

Soundsource doesn't really give you much control over the sample buffer with just 3 vague choices. Routing your audio through some sort of host and using a higher buffer as @theREALdotnet suggests is far more foolproof and I can verify his results. Using 2048 samples does not cause noticeable lip synch issues for video btw.

Hi, thank you very much for replying. Can I get your advice, I'm trying out Kushview Element but from what I can google, there's very little how-to info.

This is what I have when I open the Element app. I adjusted the buffer to 2048.

Am I suppose to do anything else?

Should I disable/quit Soundsource if I have Element running?

 

[DWPress]

You can use Element and SoundSource together, in fact they work really well together. Element is a plugin host so you need to set up your audio routing within that graph. Define your input and output devices, connect them and you should be all set if you're not using any plugins. For instance - define your source (blackhole, Loopback - not your microphone) and output device (DAC).

In Soundsource you can direct your audio from any app to any output device. So for example if Tidal is selected to play through Blackhole in Soundsource then all audio will be directed to that virtual sound device. Within Element specify Blackhole as the input and your DAC as output. With this arrangement you can then direct the audio from any app to Blackhole within Soundsource to benefit from systemwide audio control and potentially add convolution, EQ and other effects too if you wish.

 

[DWPress]

BTW, with what I outlined above Element app must be open but it can run happily in the background doing its thing.