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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

#221

Post by jwells89 »

soundnote wrote: post #220
jwells89 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the time, I don’t. It sounds silly but macOS window management works best when you don’t micromanage and just let windows pile up at whichever size fits their content, kind of like papers on a desk. Instead I group windows by virtual desktop (space) on two monitors, switching out virtual desktops to mix and match sets of windows. Individual windows are rarely moved or resized. On the odd occasion I need tilin…

Yeah, I've mostly ended up using a bunch of virtual desktops on the Mac too, and it's nice and convenient. Thing is, though, once I got into that habit on the Mac (because everything I was used to sucked ass), I tried it on Windows and it works just as well. It's less that you can't get a nice windowing setup on macOS, more that the competition offers the same, and more (esp. in KDE 6's case, much, much more)

The problem with Windows is that it’s just lacking enough in a few areas to drive me crazy.

Its virtual desktops aren’t independent between monitors for example, so when you switch desktops on one monitor it switches on all monitors, which means you can’t mix and match window sets between monitors like is possible on macOS.

Windows’ window-centric nature also gets on my nerves. The only place you’ll see any notion of application-based window grouping is the taskbar, which is desktop-bounded, and so you can’t for example gather all windows for a program from across desktops into one desktop or close all windows across desktops unless the program’s developer has added that functionality themselves. You also can’t move groups of windows between desktops quickly.

Linux doesn’t have the desktop-based issues at least primarily because it’s had virtual desktops for decades, so the feature has been mature there for a long time, but DEs there are still overwhelmingly modeled after a Win9X paradigm and often also lack app-based grouping, even as a toggle.

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

#222

Post by reaperman »

ls612 wrote: post #189
astrange wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

About 25 megabytes for an approximately 10-second buffer.

I believe 96KHz/24bit is the highest quality audio supported natively on the MacBook Pro.

24 bits * 96KHz * 2 channels * 4x safety factor = 2.3 Megabytes per second.

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

#223

Post by plussed_reader »

matt-attack wrote: post #207
plussed_reader wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There had been a grounded tail for apple powerbticks back to the era of g4 laptops. https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcSyVF...

Ever seen a short version without a cord? Similar to the standard two prong attachment? Edit: https://a.co/d/6yvKXPW

Yes, I have a few 'san francisco special' ungrounded power tails but to my knowledge they were only made during the PowerPC era and did not continue into the Intel era.

e. oh grounded short adapters. I wouldn't go for that due to the wall wort issue. I usually swapped out my apple bricks to grounded tails because it was usually easier to work into whateve ad-hoc power I encountered.

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

#225

Post by goblin89 »

voidpointer wrote: post #74
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 did experience the issue with an FIIO headphone DAC too. Basically, when connecting the device, the balance slider in audio settings would get initialized to what seemed to be a random value. I am using several other audio interfaces (both USB and Thunderbolt) as well for music production/recording and I have never seen that issue with any of those devices. I suppose it is an interoperability problem between the US…

This actually vaguely rings the bell. I think it happened just a few times and because I quickly heard it I corrected the slider and did not pay attention at the time I suppose.

Don’t think it ever happened in DAW though, only when playing audio from OS.

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

#226

Post by astrange »

ls612 wrote: post #189
astrange wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

> How much memory could a single system thread handling the audio use?

It's not "use" but "ever potentially access", so it's unbounded unless they were careful. (Audio playback to speakers itself is bounded, but mixing isn't, and wireless headphones get complicated.)

> 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".

It's difficult to know what the most important pages in memory are, because you'd have to observe every single memory access, and that's not worth the overhead.

Basically there's two ways it uses:

1. a program can tell the OS to keep something in memory (either by hinting it or forcing it, called mlock or wiring).

2. every so often, the OS will disconnect some pages such that accessing them faults (called "moving to the inactive queue"). If there's a fault, it know it's being used and moves it to active again. Eventually, if there aren't any for long enough, it gets to the end of the inactive queue and is paged out.

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

#228

Post by wkat4242 »

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…

I see the same with firefox on my FreeBSD daily driver machine.

I thought it was because I pause the entire firefox process when the screen is locked. When it resumes it sometimes acts up (I use the STOP and CONT signals for this). But maybe it's just a FF bug.

I just restart it once every few days, my OS doesn't actually become unstable due to it. But i do have 64 GB of ram (one of the benefits to no longer being tied to apple's ecosystem is that memory upgrades and amazingly cheap)

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

#229

Post by antomeie »

danhau wrote: post #62
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 in the same boat. I record and produce my music on macOS precisely because its audio system is so good. I have never had any issues with it.

For me, the mentioned balance issue is only happens on Apples AirPods. With wired audio devices, or third party bluetooth, I never noticed this.

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

#230

Post by Jcowell »

cosmical65 wrote: post #173
jwells89 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s because despite those issues, depressingly macOS still delivers an experience that to most Mac users is preferable over that of Linux or especially Windows. Increasingly it’s not that macOS is incredible, but that the alternatives are that much worse. And I say this as someone who uses Windows and Linux daily alongside macOS. Windows isn’t going to get any better so long as Microsoft’s betting on pushing service…

In my experience, people tend to say that macOS "looks good". I have not spoken with a mac user who said that macOS is more usable or the workflows are more productive. Also, Apple has convinced everyone that they always know what they are doing, so when something is wrong in the OS it's users who think they must be doing something wrong. But with Microsoft turning Windows into a big advertising billboard, I can see…

Mac is more useable and productive than windows. The comes from someone who’s worked in both. And games on windows.
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