Audio stutters with USB Dacs on Macbook M1 Pro

[vurt]

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).

Ok thank you for the tip @DWPress , kinda trial and error here. This is how I have it set up:

Is that correct? I have to use 2016 for the buffer, 2048 messes up the sound (I thought 2048 would be better?). But I think I'm still getting the skip with this setup.

 

[DWPress]

You have it set up mostly correctly @vurt though no need for Swinsian to be in that Loopback graph - anything directed to "Loopback Audio" will follow the pass-through. In Soundsource Element does not need to be directed to the M15 as Element is already directing it there, you can leave it as "No Redirect". If you were to open AppleMusic it would appear in Soundsource as well and you could direct it to "Loopback Audio" with the same benefit. Make sure in AudioMidi that all your inputs and outputs are at the same sample rate and do a restart of your Mac after set up.

Sorry the stutter persists, hopefully after a restart and playing with the buffer you will have some success. A 16GB machine should not suffer from the memory pressure problem as much. But then again, this shouldn't be an issue at all! Drove me nuts when I had my M1 trying to figure out the problems with audio....

 

[pengin15]

Hey everyone - made an account here after being a long-time reader just to keep track of this issue too. I recently switched to a M1 Pro MBP w/ 16GB RAM and can confirm that this is a problem that happens exclusively on the Apple Silicon MBP. My previous Intel MBP didn't have any showing of this issue even as I artificially increased the memory pressure to near full, while the Apple Silicon MBP will consistently skip audio as memory usage reaches on or around ~13.80GB usage. In fact, as I'm typing this, I am counting at least 20 skips/stutters streaming on Apple Music.

Tried the Soundsource / Element method too, but that unfortunately didn't completely stop the issue. The stutters/skips always came back within minutes. FWIW, this exact message always shows up in my console.app every time the audio skips, lending credence that Apple might've introduced an audio bug in macOS:

HALS_IOA1Engine::EndWriting: got an error from the kernel trap, Error: 0xE00002D7

I'd recommend everyone having this issue to file a feedback on Feedback Assistant and maybe, just for good measure and just in case someone might've read it, try to send an email to Tim Cook / Craig Federighi too.

 

[Zensō]

Hey everyone - made an account here after being a long-time reader just to keep track of this issue too. I recently switched to a M1 Pro MBP w/ 16GB RAM and can confirm that this is a problem that happens exclusively on the Apple Silicon MBP. My previous Intel MBP didn't have any showing of this issue even as I artificially increased the memory pressure to near full, while the Apple Silicon MBP will consistently skip audio as memory usage reaches on or around ~13.80GB usage. In fact, as I'm typing this, I am counting at least 20 skips/stutters streaming on Apple Music.

Tried the Soundsource / Element method too, but that unfortunately didn't completely stop the issue. The stutters/skips always came back within minutes. FWIW, this exact message always shows up in my console.app every time the audio skips, lending credence that Apple might've introduced an audio bug in macOS:

HALS_IOA1Engine::EndWriting: got an error from the kernel trap, Error: 0xE00002D7

I'd recommend everyone having this issue to file a feedback on Feedback Assistant and maybe, just for good measure and just in case someone might've read it, try to send an email to Tim Cook / Craig Federighi too.

Thanks for the info and welcome to the forum. Just to clarify one point, this also happens on the M1 Mac Studio, not just the M1 MBP.

 

[Zensō]

Question for the followers of this thread: Is this stuttering happening in any software players other than Apple Music or Safari? I’m not seeing the issue in Ableton Live, which has me wondering if players such as Roon, Tidal Desktop, et al are also immune.

 

[DWPress]

wondering if players such as Roon, Tidal Desktop, et al are also immune.

When I had my M1 it occurred with all sources of sound.

 

[pengin15]

Thanks for the info and welcome to the forum. Just to clarify one point, this also happens on the M1 Mac Studio, not just the M1 MBP.

Bad phrasing on my end! Yeah, this seems to be an issue exclusively to the Apple Silicon devices, since none of my Mac devices over the years (previously Intel) have ever exhibited this issue.

Question for the followers of this thread: Is this stuttering happening in any software players other than Apple Music or Safari? I’m not seeing the issue in Ableton Live, which has me wondering if players such as Roon, Tidal Desktop, et al are also immune.

Nothing seems to be immune in my case. Apple Music, Spotify, web browsers (Safari, Arc, Edge and Firefox are what I use) all suffers from this issue.

It might be the case that music production apps or “hi-fi” apps are wired to circumvent this issue by allowing a certain level of priority for coreaudiod that normal software normally wouldn’t think of ever needing, since an earlier post in this thread seems to indicate that Audirvana is exempt from this issue. There was also eelpout’s post on MacClickFixus that seemed able to prevent the audio bus from ever closing, thereby resolving the issue, but that doesn't seem to be an option anymore since it seemed to have been created as an x86 app which previously worked on Rosetta, but no longer does as of Ventura.

I’d imagine this would have been an easy fix for Apple, if they would notice this issue.

On another note, I just happened to have a Fiio K7 too and Fiio agreed to send me an adapter to flash a new firmware for the MCU to mitigate this issue. It’ll probably arrive in a month or so - let’s see how that goes.

 

[jayadubya]

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.

View attachment 289782

Am I suppose to do anything else?

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

I too struggle enormously to figure out how to use Element and Soundsource together, and Blackhole for that matter. I've tried to find a YT video explainer, but they all seem to be ultra technical DAW things, and I get lost fast

I actually appreciate that it isn't all that technical, but between MacOS and the way it labels things and how Element works... I just get lost. I do appreciate the advice and input of @DWPress and others. Could someone else using Element and Soundsource (I also use eqMac, just to add to the complexity!) show a screen shot of their setup? I presume Blackhole necessitates creating aggregate sound devices. Do we always have to create aggregate devices?

 

[jayadubya]

Bad phrasing on my end! Yeah, this seems to be an issue exclusively to the Apple Silicon devices, since none of my Mac devices over the years (previously Intel) have ever exhibited this issue.



Nothing seems to be immune in my case. Apple Music, Spotify, web browsers (Safari, Arc, Edge and Firefox are what I use) all suffers from this issue.

It might be the case that music production apps or “hi-fi” apps are wired to circumvent this issue by allowing a certain level of priority for coreaudiod that normal software normally wouldn’t think of ever needing, since an earlier post in this thread seems to indicate that Audirvana is exempt from this issue. There was also eelpout’s post on MacClickFixus that seemed able to prevent the audio bus from ever closing, thereby resolving the issue, but that doesn't seem to be an option anymore since it seemed to have been created as an x86 app which previously worked on Rosetta, but no longer does as of Ventura.

I’d imagine this would have been an easy fix for Apple, if they would notice this issue.

On another note, I just happened to have a Fiio K7 too and Fiio agreed to send me an adapter to flash a new firmware for the MCU to mitigate this issue. It’ll probably arrive in a month or so - let’s see how that goes.

Man, that firmware update for the FiioK7 is a pain in the butt. I got it and tried to flash it on my Windows machine, but I just couldn't get it to work. The cable adapter just floats inside these pin holes and doesn't make contact. It was seriously user-unfriendly! But I don't think it would make any difference for this issue, unfortunately.

 

[Zensō]

I too struggle enormously to figure out how to use Element and Soundsource together, and Blackhole for that matter. I've tried to find a YT video explainer, but they all seem to be ultra technical DAW things, and I get lost fast

I actually appreciate that it isn't all that technical, but between MacOS and the way it labels things and how Element works... I just get lost. I do appreciate the advice and input of @DWPress and others. Could someone else using Element and Soundsource (I also use eqMac, just to add to the complexity!) show a screen shot of their setup? I presume Blackhole necessitates creating aggregate sound devices. Do we always have to create aggregate devices?

This might be helpful:

SoundSource: Using third-party Audio Units with SoundSource

You can use third-party Audio Unit effects in SoundSource.

rogueamoeba.com

I’m not sure you need Element though, if you’re already using SoundSource.

 

[DWPress]

I would only recommend Element if the Soundsource trial does not help or doesn't help enough and I only recommended Element because it's more or less a free option. All you really need is Blackhole (free) and Element - which is a virtual audio device (Blackhole) and a plugin manager that allows you to control the buffer (Element). Soundsource and Loopback are both great apps but don't need to be in the chain at all unless you have need of some of their other features. You DO NOT NEED an aggregate device at all to make this work.

I struggled with this when I was starting out with various ways of signal processing too, lots to wrap your mind around indeed so I'm happy to help others along and not make some of the mistakes I did along the way.

I will post some graphs later tonight and try to explain more fully how and why this can help. I'll send Apple the bill for my time...

 

[DWPress]

You don't need SoundSource necessarily to make this work but it's nice to have so your system sounds and alerts don't play through your DAC and to direct apps to use specific outputs, in this case to make use of Blackhole but you might want another app to play through desktop speakers or headphones.

1) download and install Blackhole 2 channel
2) download and install Element
3) download and install SoundSource (optional)
4) restart your computer

5) open Element, open preferences and select Blackhole as input device and your DAC as output device, set your sample rate and audio buffer size. In this case a Topping D10.

6) in SoundSource select Blackhole as your output for any application you want to send audio to.

Without SoundSource you merely select Blackhole as your output device within Mac System Settings and you can still redirect system sounds and alerts elsewhere:

Enjoy, hopefully the problems are now taken care of. If not, double check in Audio Midi Setup app that all your sample rates match up properly and, if so, try gradually increasing the buffer size. The default is 512 samples, the larger the buffer the longer the delay so it may affect video synching. I find no issues at 1024 with video. You can have Element automatically open every time you boot your computer in Mac System Settings > Startup Items but you no longer need to look at it again and just let it run in the background doing its thing.

* As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I don't use Element anymore because for my needs it has some issues since OS Monterey. I now use Hang Loose Convolver made by member @mitchco which is also based on the Juce framework but 100% stable with current OS and you use the same sort of graph structure. There is a 14 day trial for HLC so if you have issues with Element it is worth trying HLC. This is how you set up AudioPluginHost which is part of HLC:

 

[DWPress]

BTW, if you can do what I outlined above - you are also able to easily host a myriad of plugins like parametric EQ and convolution generated from apps like REW, Dirac, Audiolense, Acurate and others. Here's how I'm currently using 8 channels with Dirac Live Bass Control and my 3 way active XO speakers with 2 subs letting Dirac control the sub>woofer integration with my own digital crossovers and near field driver correction for the mid and tweeter drivers hosted within HLC Convolver.

PS, I upgraded to a M2 Mini with 24GB of RAM in hopes that I would no longer have to deal with the problem you are all dealing with and so far smooth sailing but obviously not an ideal solution.

 

[pengin15]

So Apple just announced macOS Sonoma during WWDC today (the VR headset actually looks like something mighty interesting). I'd imagine the answer is no, but if anyone's trying the betas throughout this beta season, could you maybe check if it might have just fixed this issue?

Fingers crossed...

 

[theREALdotnet]

So Apple just announced macOS Sonoma during WWDC today

Yes, and it’ll contain “game mode”, something that prioritises video and audio processing paths for a better real-time experience. We can only hope…

 

[vurt]

But then again, this shouldn't be an issue at all! Drove me nuts when I had my M1 trying to figure out the problems with audio....

I swear the stutter was making me loathe using my Mac, especially when I need music most when working. The stutter kept interrupting my focus!

The stuttering I've been experiencing is with the Questyle M15 dac/amp. I decided to try my old Qudelix 5k dac/amp as the sound output (without any of the loopbacks and Element workaround) and so far I'm not hearing any stutters. I don't get it at all. What gives.

I'd have thought if it's the Mac's software, every dac/amp will have the same problem. Does the dac play a part too? From this thread, it looks like people are experiencing the stutter with a lot of different dacs.

 

[JoeWhip]

I just saw this. I have a MacBook Pro with the M1 chip, 16ram and I use a 4TB LaCie drive where all my music is located. I run Audirvana Studio controlled by an iPad into a Schiit Yggy LIM DAC via a DH Labs usb c to b cable. No stuttering issues at all. The SQ is damn good too much better, to me, than my older MacBook.

 

[Ulfgard]

I swear the stutter was making me loathe using my Mac, especially when I need music most when working. The stutter kept interrupting my focus!

The stuttering I've been experiencing is with the Questyle M15 dac/amp. I decided to try my old Qudelix 5k dac/amp as the sound output (without any of the loopbacks and Element workaround) and so far I'm not hearing any stutters. I don't get it at all. What gives.

I'd have thought if it's the Mac's software, every dac/amp will have the same problem. Does the dac play a part too? From this thread, it looks like people are experiencing the stutter with a lot of different dacs.

OP here. The 5k is the only cabled DAC among about half a dozen devices I tried (USB-C or not) that works flawlessly all the time. I have no idea why, and that is not due to a lack of trial and error. Oh and bluetooth connections also work fine, even if a cabled connection to the same DAC stutters.

 

[vurt]

OP here. The 5k is the only cabled DAC among about half a dozen devices I tried (USB-C or not) that works flawlessly all the time. I have no idea why, and that is not due to a lack of trial and error. Oh and bluetooth connections also work fine, even if a cabled connection to the same DAC stutters.

Wow ok, what are the odds. So weird that the 5k is fine.

I don't suppose you have the Cayin RU6, or anyone here? I was about to pull the trigger the RU6 to experiment before remembering to test my 5k.

(But I'm tempted to try the RU6 anyway , to hear its sound. It's suppose to be very different from the M15.)

 

[vurt]

OP here. The 5k is the only cabled DAC among about half a dozen devices I tried (USB-C or not) that works flawlessly all the time. I have no idea why, and that is not due to a lack of trial and error. Oh and bluetooth connections also work fine, even if a cabled connection to the same DAC stutters.

I wonder if this USB buffer is what's helping with the skip. I see it fluctuating between 48–50%.