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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

#181

Post by theamk »

gok wrote: post #153

The common form of this bug is way older than 10 years and isn't really specific to macOS. The problem is that audio devices do not have an explicit concept of "balance". It's set by adjusting the level of each channel. That volume adjusting process is not reliable. It often happens over an unreliable interface where some volume adjustments are just dropped. This hits a second problem: the audio device often has the…

Not sure if that's related to Apple's original problem, but in the scenario you are describing, the fix is trivial: detect when level commands are dropped and retry (up to N times / for up to X milliseconds). And don't forget to check existing volume between steps 1 and 2, so you can be made sure what the previous state was.

I don't think the "fighting" will be a problem at all - you'd have to to press volume control on device and on Mac at the same time, within milliseconds. And in the worst case, you'll run out of retries, and it will be no worse than situation today.

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

#182

Post by Night_Thastus »

smcleod wrote: post #169
avery17 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uptime, 456 days 12 hours 8 minutes and 42 seconds. Firefox, 668 tabs. Countless other background tasks. Why doesn't my audio work!?!

That… is not a good idea. You should patch your OS.

That's not the original commenter. It's just someone being humorous.

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

#183

Post by theamk »

noSyncCloud wrote: post #154
quitit wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Err... Wasn't the entire point of the post that the bug is nearly 10 years old?

the person said they download 3rd party app 10 years ago

I don't see anything there about contacting Apple

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

#184

Post by smcleod »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #182
smcleod wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That… is not a good idea. You should patch your OS.

That's not the original commenter. It's just someone being humorous.

Oh - sorry! I completely missed that. Will teach me for reading the comments at 7AM!

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

#185

Post by iamwpj »

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 had crackling in my M1 MBP headphone jack, any variety of plugged in, USB/DAC all summer/early fall. I assumed it was an audio controller issue. And then it kind of dissipated, until there was a warm day in October. I had just watered the plant on my desk. All winter -- not an issue. House is cool and dry, but as soon as the humidity gets above 60% or so, I get crackling. Not sure what I'm going to do this summer.

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

#186

Post by jbverschoor »

donatj wrote: post #18
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 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…

Had crackling with slowdowns and kernel panics on M1.

Was fixed with a motherboard swap

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

#187

Post by staticfish »

cozzyd wrote: post #155
da768 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty easy with a global gitignore

it's not my computer that produces these files... but yes, perhaps MacOS should ship with .DS_Store in a global gitignore by default (though I don't even know if it ships with git at all...)

It does not (unless you install XCode developer tools)

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

#188

Post by treprinum »

pdimitar wrote: post #165
treprinum wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My $8000 M3 Max MacBook is having all kinds of crazy issues so it's not just Intel... Apple pays significantly less to SWengs than Meta/Google so I guess you get what you paid for on their side. I just wish I got what I paid for as well.

Yikes. I'm really sorry you're going through this. Are you considering alternatives, or are you collecting fixes?

I'll see if future Sonoma updates fix them or not. I have two other MacBooks and some NVidia-based laptop so it's not a single point of failure luckily.

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

#189

Post by ls612 »

astrange wrote: post #178
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...

This is not fixable. You’d need an RTOS. (You can’t mlock every single code page possibly executed by the thread for instance.)

How much memory could a single system thread handling the audio use? Forgive my ignorance I don't deeply understand OS level memory management but I thought, much like the task scheduler has priority understanding for CPU resource management, the memory manager had an idea of "these pages are important find some other page to evict".

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

#190

Post by raydev »

goblin89 wrote: post #43

I have been producing music on macOS for 8+ years on multiple laptops (from x86 to ARM), different external DACs, wired and wireless headphones, etc. I am very sensitive to L/R balance and sometimes have to adjust the panning ever so slightly if my ears are off (e.g., after pressure change during a flight) in phone’s Accessibility settings. The fact that there is an Apple-specific L/R audio balance bug, which now see…

I'm shocked to learn 1) it's still an issue and 2) other people have experienced it.

For 1-2 years in the mid-2010s, my audio balance on my work MBP would routinely drift every month or so, and none of my coworkers or Mac-using friends, nor anyone on the tech forums I frequented had experienced such a thing. Just a few random posts on Google with no solution.

Then, it simply stopped happening. Haven't thought about it in years until I read this tweet. Fascinating!

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