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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

#51

Post by polotics »

15457345234 wrote: post #31
NoPedantsThanks wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use my Macs for audio a lot, including with headphones, and have never experienced this in 20 years.

This is one of those things that make you question reality somewhat as I know, from seeing countless videos and having some familiarity with the topic, that macs dominate desktop music production - I've never seen a producer or a DJ using windows, ever. This is apparently because the USB audio stack on mac is so streamlined that the buffering is minimal, i.e. you can basically apply realtime audio effects and mix 'li…

well this is seemingly only when adjusting volume on the Mac itself. The Apogee plugged into my Mac has its own volume control, that doesn't suffer from this drift.

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

#52

Post by TwistedWave »

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...

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

#53

Post by yummypaint »

yungporko wrote: post #50

as a long term apple user, their blatant disregard for fixing bugs is really starting to piss me off to the point where next time i upgrade my phone and computer, i'm probably going back to android/linux. their software is literally a microsoft-tier experience (maybe even worse at this point) across the board now, and i'm not going to keep paying a premium for non-premium bullshit full of stupid bugs any junior dev c…

Please do stop buying their junk. It's sad to watch people i know squandering so much money to buy buggy stuff that i end up troubleshooting for them. If it were linux we could just fix it ourselves and be done with it, but apple's entitled paternalism is the final insult. "Maybe you're holding it wrong?"

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

#55

Post by chedabob »

izacus wrote: post #15

And I don't think it'll get better, with Sonoma I'm seeing more and more audio switching bugs and weird behaviours when I connect headphones. At least this balance bug disappeared, although it was plagueing me on my previous MacBook.

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 and the debug panel from the Bluetooth status bar icon, so I'm yet to figure out what mode it's using that my other headphones (Sony MDR-ZX770BN) don't.

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

#56

Post by bzzzt »

andrelaszlo wrote: post #32
izacus wrote: post #15

And I don't think it'll get better, with Sonoma I'm seeing more and more audio switching bugs and weird behaviours when I connect headphones. At least this balance bug disappeared, although it was plagueing me on my previous MacBook.

Same. The annoying thing that used to happen with bluetooth headsets, where macos suddenly decides to use them for input as well as output and the audio quality drops noticeably (full duplex, bitrate, blabla), now happens even when the microphone isn't selected. It really sucks. I'm not using a regular bluetooth headset, these are my hearing aids and my only way to get decent sound in meetings. Switching to mac last…

Any application or website can select the default microphone or a specific audio device which can cause that bluetooth issue. And lots of applications are enabling the microphone even if they don't need it. I don't think switching away from mac would solve that.

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

#57

Post by bzzzt »

shiroiushi wrote: post #33
trilbyglens wrote: post #8

It's almost like apple doesn't actually care ;)

Why should they? Are these people going to abandon their Macs because of these bugs? Obviously not, so why should Apple spend any money at all fixing them?

While it is annoying, I've got much better audio performance and less hassle from macOS than with Linux or Windows, even with bugs. There were a few audio bugs that annoyed me in the '2020 videoconferencing season', but most were solved. I've noticed the L/R volume bug then, but not in the last few years and my perception was it was fixed. So, even if it's buggy it might not be buggy for everyone.

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

#58

Post by bzzzt »

bichonnages wrote: post #27

Is this a problem that exists only with headphones? I have the impression that the speakers on my brand-new Macbook Pro M3 tend to drift to the left, or at least not to be centered.

You know you can check in the audio settings panel?

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

#59

Post by andrelaszlo »

bzzzt wrote: post #56
andrelaszlo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. The annoying thing that used to happen with bluetooth headsets, where macos suddenly decides to use them for input as well as output and the audio quality drops noticeably (full duplex, bitrate, blabla), now happens even when the microphone isn't selected. It really sucks. I'm not using a regular bluetooth headset, these are my hearing aids and my only way to get decent sound in meetings. Switching to mac last…

Any application or website can select the default microphone or a specific audio device which can cause that bluetooth issue. And lots of applications are enabling the microphone even if they don't need it. I don't think switching away from mac would solve that.

The default microphone is set to another microphone.

I can assure you that I didn't have this issue in Linux. :) There were other issues, of course, but they were at least solvable.

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

#60

Post by SkyPuncher »

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 had it happen for years with a Fiio DAC, but it only rarely occurs with my SMSL dac.

The flip side is that I get the crackling extremely frequently.

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