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Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years

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Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years

#131

Post by ianschmitz »

butlike wrote: post #120
madaxe_again wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The audio balance on Apple computers changes randomly, and has done so for at least a decade. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/79384/audio-balanc...

FWIW, I just ran the following stress test for a bit in VSCode, and then mashed the Vol +/- buttons on an M1, and noticed that the volume toggle started to lag, but I didn't notice any balance drift. Is this something that would be reflected in the slider, or is it auditory-only? +function() { while (1) { for (var i = 0; i < 1000000000000000; i++) { console.log(i); for (var j = 0; j < 1000000000000000; j++) { console…

In my experience the slider definitely moves. You can see it in real time with the settings page open

Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years

#132

Post by Night_Thastus »

tmikaeld wrote: post #21
donatj wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use an external DAC and encounter this crackling problem regularly. I have to unplug/replug my DAC to get it to go back to normal. I just thought it was a hardware problem with my DAC because it’s getting up there in the years, thought the caps might be going. Hmm…

I have 4 external all different sound cards and AMPs (USB), it's the same on all of them. There is no software remedy, only re-connecting physically works (temporarily)

This is not a perfect solution, but if it's possible - see if the apps in question have an option for 'exclusive control' over the audio device.

If they do, then the app in question will pass the audio raw to the external device without the OS or any existing mixers interfering at all.

Of course, no other audio will play - only that from the app with exclusive control. It's not perfect but it can help in these scenarios.

Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years

#133

Post by Night_Thastus »

nonninz wrote: post #111
TwistedWave wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have just reported a bug where high memory pressure could cause memory pages from the real-time audio thread to get swapped out, causing audio glitches. I am not hopeful for a timely resolution now...

I have this using Firefox on a 2019 Macbook Pro with 16GB RAM. If the laptop has not been restarted for a while, Firefox tabs will eat up more and more memory over time until it makes the mac kind-of unresponsive (*) and will need to get hard power cycled. The only signs that this is about to happen are two: 1. Any audio-emitting webapp will start to get very choppy, whether is youtube on FF, Google meet on chrome, o…

This seems unusual for such a serious memory leak to be present. Do you have any addons/plugins in Firefox? One of them may be the cause of the leak.

Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years

#134

Post by quitit »

ben7799 wrote: post #114

I don't think I've ever seen this or heard anyone talk about it. I've had at least one Mac since 2006 and all the engineering departments I've worked in since 2014 have been all Mac. Mostly at work I'm not doing much with audio, but at home I have had external DACs and equipment, I have a Scarlet interface, etc.. that I hook mics or guitars too from time to time, etc.. There are plenty of things I can complain about…

While people can have different experiences. I did have a L/R drift issue on an older Mac (PPC days) - Do you know what I did to have it resolved? I didn't write a twitter post, I contacted apple support.

When the support person couldn't address it they assigned an engineer who worked with me to identify the issue - the bug was patched in the next x.x.1

That's literally all it takes. I've gone down this route 3 times now in various products of their, so I know it's not some off chance to be assigned an engineer.

It beggars belief that people think complaining to the wind will get the problem resolved, when all they need to do is contact the manufacturer.

Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years

#135

Post by coldtea »

rado wrote: post #128
coldtea wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The behavior I want (and get) is: nothing switches input language, except me explicitly. So,if I'm in an app "with alternative input language X" it means at some point before I excplitly set X as the active input language (and that gets enforced system-wide). Then if I change to Spotlight, it still uses the same X language. I understood that to be what you also want, but perhaps you want the opposite (which I haven't…

I'm typing in Notes in Bulgarian, switching to NetNewsWire, where I press K to clear all articles and it doesn't work because NetNewsWire is now in Bulgarian. It makes no sense. Same for Spotlight. It searches the system in the default system language, what should it matter that I'm currently typing in Bulgarian somewhere? Windows has an option whether to keep each app's language or apply it globally.

>I'm typing in Notes in Bulgarian, switching to NetNewsWire, where I press K to clear all articles and it doesn't work because NetNewsWire is now in Bulgarian. It makes no sense.

That's an issue - some apps get it right, others don't, not sure what the pattern is (e.g. if it's apps using the same GUI framework).

I think that issue is orthogonal to the dichotomy I talked before though:

(a) one system-wide input language active at any given time, only explicitly changed by the user.

(b) each app "remembers" its own input language, and focusing that app switches to it

From what you describe, you want (b), and macOS disrespect it for some apps, despite the toggle to do just that.

For the shortcuts thougj, the OS should handle it for all apps/GUI frameworks though, and make shortcut assignments work the same respective of language chosen. I mean "Cmd-" should work, whether is mapped to one character in an input source or another character in some other input source: just based on which physical key was pressed.

Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years

#136

Post by b20000 »

TwistedWave wrote: post #52
tmikaeld wrote: post #14

The left/right channels drifting randomly is one thing (SoundSource fixes it), but it gets worse.. I've been trying to raise awareness of Apples horrible audio issues for quite a few years now. Driver re-starts and USB re-connects, for no apparent reason. [0][1] I have the issue on Mac Mini (2018) Intel, Mac Studio M1, Macbook Pro M2, so it's not device specific. [0] https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/132423 […

I have just reported a bug where high memory pressure could cause memory pages from the real-time audio thread to get swapped out, causing audio glitches. I am not hopeful for a timely resolution now...

this is the fault of a poorly designed application and not the OS

Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years

#137

Post by da768 »

cozzyd wrote: post #124
MetalSnake wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "cult" and "attention to details" was a long time ago, when Steve Jobs was CEO. But even then there were many bugs, like the .DS_Store files, which never got fixed. It got much worse when Tim Cook took over. Now I only use macOS because the next best thing is still worse, and also the Mac hardware became really good with the switch to ARM (after a long long dark time with x86 where the hardware got worse and wor…

I wish .DS_Store files were automatically gitignored... (though why should git fix such a stupid problem it didn't create...)

Pretty easy with a global gitignore

Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years

#138

Post by chedabob »

murermader wrote: post #106
chedabob wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am currently experiencing an unbelievably annoying bug where once I finish on Google Meet in Firefox, all audio/video across the whole OS plays in slo-mo. I have to turn my headphones off and back on to fix it. It's something specific to these headphones (Sony WH-C700N), as they do something different to get higher audio quality when using the microphone. Apple have helpefully removed Bluetooth Explorer from Xcode…

That is so funny, sometimes I experience the exact opposite. After connecting my MacBook to my projector (ViewSonic 747), all video (Chrome, Quicktime, IINA, etc) plays like 30x faster. The only thing that helped was rebooting the laptop.

I've seen that too, and yeah, the only solution I had for the user was to reboot.

Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years

#139

Post by philistine »

tmikaeld wrote: post #14

The left/right channels drifting randomly is one thing (SoundSource fixes it), but it gets worse.. I've been trying to raise awareness of Apples horrible audio issues for quite a few years now. Driver re-starts and USB re-connects, for no apparent reason. [0][1] I have the issue on Mac Mini (2018) Intel, Mac Studio M1, Macbook Pro M2, so it's not device specific. [0] https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/132423 […

Oh god, I thought my display was the problem, but it's the laptop! I'm so angry that Apple is to blame.

Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years

#140

Post by serguzest »

I think this is a hostile policy of Apple not to bother implementing stable interoperation with non-apple hardware.

I have an LG monitor and a list of bugs I am experiencing in the macOS:

- No sound volume control

- No brightness control

- Nightshift doesn't work on it

- Audio is unusable most of the time. When I try to play audio on the monitor, it is playing it at like 10x speed with a stuttering sound and if you try to watch a 20-minute video it finishes in like 2 minutes.

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