31 ms·

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

336 points by faebi 3y ago

Sakos 3y ago
What's the audio left/right balance bug?
- madaxe_again 3y ago
  The audio balance on Apple computers changes randomly, and has done so for at least a decade. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/79384/audio-balance-changes-randomly-in-macbook-pro-retina-15-inch-mid-2012 https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/79384/audio-balanc...
  - thepangolino 3y ago
    [dead]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - unwind 3y ago
    Following the link, and a few more, describes at as changing "when volume buttons are pressed during high CPU load". That is perhaps random-seeming, but also way different from actually being reandom. I have never used a (modern) Mac long enough to listen to audio, so I have no experience with this I just thought it sounded odd. Now having learned that, I really (really) wonder how such a bug can happen, and how it can stay ignored for so long by the always-ranted-about masters of vertically integrated luxury computers. More the former, though. It sounds almost as if there already is software somewhere that is doing something to maintain the proper balance (perhaps due to bugs in the hardware), and then that something becomes CPU-starved and/or interrupted when the volume changes, and doesn't resume properly. This is a wild guess straight outta ... Hampton, I have no clue about Mac hardware or macOS internals. Fun to think about, though! I hope they fix it for real, soon!
    - theshrike79 3y ago
      > Now having learned that, I really (really) wonder how such a bug can happen, and how it can stay ignored for so long by the always-ranted-about masters of vertically integrated luxury computers. More the former, though. My first guess was that "volume up" is actually "increase volume on left channel" and "increase volume on right channel" And when there's high CPU load, one of those commands gets lost or ignored for some reason.
      - unwind 3y ago
        That's an even simpler (=better, often) theory! Thanks!
      - coldtea 3y ago
        And they can't synchronize this?
        duped 3y ago
        Normally the solution to this is to have a pair of parameters, pan and gain and compute the discrete channel gains from those two parameters. That way there's no synchronization and you can handle changes to those parameters independently. It sounds like they have inverted the relationship between what is displayed to the users and what is used by the machine.
    - madaxe_again 3y ago
      There are worse bugs that happen under high CPU load - I reported that you can interact with applications behind the hibernate Lock Screen… 9 years ago. You still can.
  - NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
    I use my Macs for audio a lot, including with headphones, and have never experienced this in 20 years.
    - 15457345234 3y ago
      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 'live' using a USB output sink, i.e. that you can DJ with it. Now apparently there's a game-breaking bug? For 10 years? And it's a really really big deal? Hmm.
      - polotics 3y ago
        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.
  - sammorrowdrums 3y ago
    Yep, I’ve very much discovered and confirmed this behaviour independently, I was so shocked to learn that it was a known issue. I know it’s silly but it helped me with imposter syndrome to see such a major OS that prides itself on seamless “it just works” experiences tolerate bugs like this. That and the fact if you airplay a movie to Apple TV it thinks you want it to cast over the top of it with random advert videos in your web browser, so you can’t watch and browse. We’re all human I guess ;)
    - prmoustache 3y ago
      Does Apple have a public bug tracker?
      - SllX 3y ago
        No. They have a black hole you can toss your bug reports into, and they’ll swear up and down that past the event horizon they’ll see it, but you more likely than not will never hear about it again.
    - cm2187 3y ago
      But a lot of those bugs are basic functionalities, it is just that they are not the path Apple wants you to take. For years now, and across iphone models and iOS versions, my iphone randomizes the artwork of the mp3s in the music app (ie display the wrong album cover). I see people complaining about that in forums but I guess if you are not using Apple Music they don't care. I don't seem to be able to copy files from my iphone onto a windows desktop. Tried several cables, the transfer fails after a few GB. I guess if you are not syncing your files through iCloud they don't care. A bug recently corrupted the iphone mail app. It wouldn't sync mails anymore, in fact would display old mails from the wrong account (I have multiple setup). I only fixed it by deleting the accounts and recreating them. That's using ActiveSync. But I guess if you don't use an apple email they don't care. Another bug on my ipad. The USB-C DAC often fails to be recognised. Tried several DAC. I thought it was a hardware problem (usb port damaged), except that few hardware problems are resolved by rebooting. But if you don't use apple wireless headphones they don't care. These are basic functionalities, but not using the main path which happens to be the most profitable to Apple. Apple's reputation for quality is inconsistent with my experience of their products.
  - tgv 3y ago
    I've been using macs since the 90s for "serious amateur" music production, and I listen to music while working on an MBP daily, both via the headphone jack and via a USB audio interface, and I've never encountered that. Is there no idea what triggers it?
    - coldtea 3y ago
      Quickly changing the system volume while the system is under heavy CPU load, plus chance.
      - tgv 3y ago
        That's indeed something I've never done. So the culprit is that the volume knob sends multiple messages and they get lost or something?
  - butlike 3y ago
    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.log(j); } } console.log('herewegoagain'); } }();
    - ianschmitz 3y ago
      In my experience the slider definitely moves. You can see it in real time with the settings page open
- rickdeckard 3y ago
  To quote Apple's own (no longer available) KB-article from 2012 [1]: "In some cases the audio balance may unexpectedly drift towards the left or right channel. This can happen if you rapidly press the volume up or down keys while the computer's microprocessor is under heavy load." [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120630125615/https://support.apple.com/kb/TA22305 https://web.archive.org/web/20120630125615/https://support.a...
  - rob74 3y ago
    Wow, I can't even start to imagine how this bug came into existence (and why it should take so long to fix it)...
  - butlike 3y ago
    Do you think this issue would persist if I BootCamp'd Windows?
naveen_k 3y ago
If you use AssistiveTouch on your iPhone or iPad with a customized top-level menu, every iOS/iPadOS update resets it to default settings. Apple hasn't fixed it for over 8+ years either.
- fotta 3y ago
  That doesn't happen for me and I've been using AssistiveTouch for 10 years now
  - naveen_k 3y ago
    Try changing the number of icons (Customize Top Level Menu) on the AssistiveTouch to anything other than the default six before your next os update. It’ll reset to the default layout.
trilbyglens 3y ago
It's almost like apple doesn't actually care ;)
- shiroiushi 3y ago
  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?
  - rogual 3y ago
    In the Jobs years it was because the person at the tob intrinsically gave a shit about making a good thing. But you're right, it certainly seems that's the kind of game Cook is playing. Better than Windows, but no better, and keep the extra money.
    - shiroiushi 3y ago
      It's a winning business strategy, especially when you have legions of die-hard customers who won't leave you. Microsoft has a similar situation (though many probably won't leave MS for different reasons), so it's in their business interest to increase profits by subjugating their customers with annoying ads baked into the OS. What do they have to lose? It's not like Apple's/MS's customers are going to switch to Linux (which has its own problems of course). To be fair to Apple, it does sound like this is a somewhat rare bug (only seen in high-load situations?). It's not as bad, I think, as ads in the OS. So, as you say, Apple just needs to be a little better than MS and that's good enough.
      - pohuing 3y ago
        Except apple does also put ads in their os. And you can't even permanently disable them, the iCloud nagware comes back every once in a while trying to sell me overpriced storage.
        NoNoisle 3y ago
rented_mule 3y ago
I've been happily using an app available for free on the App Store to work around it for years now: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/balance-lock/id1019371109 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/balance-lock/id1019371109
- addandsubtract 3y ago
  That's the app linked in the tweet. Seems ridiculous that we need an app to fix this, though.
  - andrelaszlo 3y ago
    At least it's free. I've paid for multiple 10$ apps that just work around macos bugs.
donatj 3y ago
It’s dumb that I have to run a resident program to fix this, but here we are - it fixes the problem. Otherwise every time I dock my laptop the audio is in some random balance. https://www.tunabellysoftware.com/balance_lock/ https://www.tunabellysoftware.com/balance_lock/
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
tmikaeld 3y ago
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 https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/132423 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32163114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32163114 [2] https://developer.apple.com/forums/search/?q=Popping+Sound https://developer.apple.com/forums/search/?q=Popping+Sound
- donatj 3y ago
  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…
  - smcleod 3y ago
    I wonder if the clock source is getting out of whack with the DACs, it could be caused by extreme jitter.
  - tmikaeld 3y ago
    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)
    - donatj 3y ago
      Well dang. I have had intention on buying a new DAC largely due to the issue; for better or worse there goes that plan.
      - tmikaeld 3y ago
        I haven't tried Apple "certified" Thunderbolt devices yet, but others in the huge Apple thread [0] has and still experience cracks/pops.
izacus 3y ago
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.
- andrelaszlo 3y ago
  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 year was a mistake.
  - bzzzt 3y ago
    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.
    - andrelaszlo 3y ago
      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.
      - bzzzt 3y ago
        Most conferencing applications or sites use a separate 'preferred' microphone and select that one.
        andrelaszlo 3y ago
        I'll look into if it has something to do with that. Thanks for the tip
Razengan 3y ago
Some longstanding bugs/limitations in macOS/iOS make me honestly wonder if any higher ups at Apple actually use their own products, or do they just have fleshbots (human assistants/secretaries) do everything for them..
- zihotki 3y ago
  You should first ask if those problems have any major impact and if they impact the higher ups. Probably the answer will be "no".
anon22981 3y ago
I’m not sure if a bug or a feature, but on two different iphones I’ve had the issue where the volume suddenly aggressively goes up or down without me pressing the volume button. Has happened at least in netflix and youtube. Always when I’m actively using the phone. Might an ill fitted case or something, but those phones had different cases. Anyone know if this is some bug or am I being dumb?
- orf 3y ago
  Happens to me with keyboard clicks on iOS: suddenly they jump from the standard low volume to very loud clacks.
- 4dm1r4lg3n3r4l 3y ago
  With iOS 17 I started experiencing something similar. Whenever I use Control Center to decrease volume to zero, two out of ten times or so it moves it back to 15-20% (seems random). I have no idea if an app running in the background is causing this, or the OS, but is very annoying...
- bombcar 3y ago
  Mine (possibly related) is volume will look normal but be super quiet - touch the control at all and suddenly it’s as loud as it looked.
bichonnages 3y ago
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.
- bzzzt 3y ago
  You know you can check in the audio settings panel?
gexaha 3y ago
Wow, I always thought that it could be just my personal hearing issues, never could properly google the issue
- nlunbeck 3y ago
  I always thought my earbuds were wearing out unevenly, which may also be the case, but this is good to check up on every few months
Sandrasmith 3y ago
[dead]
alex_duf 3y ago
This is much older than 10 years https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/79384/audio-balance-changes-randomly-in-macbook-pro-retina-15-inch-mid-2012 https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/79384/audio-balanc...
- NoNoisle 3y ago
  Love how much older == 1 year
  - alex_duf 3y ago
    First comment: >I've had this problem on multiple MacBooks (from my old Powerbook 15 from 2003 to prior to finding this question on my late 2011 MBP 13"). so about 21 years
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kpmcc 3y ago
The fact that this has existed for so long and is common enough to warrant a third party program devoted to resolving the issue is an embarrassment for Apple. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/balance-lock/id1019371109?mt=12?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/balance-lock/id1019371109?mt=1...
- 10729287 3y ago
  There are so many bugs and even more poor ergonomic choices that have been unfixed for years on Apple Devices. It's fascinating considering the whole cult regarding the company's so called attention to details.
  - user_7832 3y ago
    Attention to detail, but only when they can market/advertise it, perhaps?
  - MetalSnake 3y ago
    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 worse with each iteration).
    - cozzyd 3y ago
      I wish .DS_Store files were automatically gitignored... (though why should git fix such a stupid problem it didn't create...)
      - da768 3y ago
        Pretty easy with a global gitignore
        3y ago
goblin89 3y ago
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 seemingly everyone suffers from, is complete news to me. Sometimes I feel like I am living in a different reality…
- danhau 3y ago
  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.
  - antomeie 3y ago
    For me, the mentioned balance issue is only happens on Apples AirPods. With wired audio devices, or third party bluetooth, I never noticed this.
- faebi 3y ago
  I can imagine, but it happens often to me. It takes some time to notice that something feels off, until I remember. With the app I get the audio-balance-restored notification every now and then. The thing is, it's annoying subtle.
- SkyPuncher 3y ago
  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.
  - goblin89 3y ago
    IIUC this crackling has always happened to me regardless of the OS, both on macOS and Windows. It should be solvable by increasing audio buffer size (& therefore latency), getting better hardware, or bouncing/freezing tracks to audio.
rado 3y ago
Reminds me of my "favourite" macOS issue: alternative keyboard language input is carried over to the next app I switch to, or Spotlight. Almost 20 years of forcing me to switch back to the default language hundreds of times a day. Any idea if it can be fixed by an app? Thanks!
- coldtea 3y ago
  That has (since forever) been covered with a Settings toggle. Keyboard -> Input Sources [edit] -> Automatically switch to a document's input source. Checking it maintains different "active input source memory" per app. Unchecking it keeps a global "active input source".
  - rado 3y ago
    This only works if the next app has a text input in focus.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      Not sure what you mean. With this setting, I never have to "switch back to the default language", it only switches when I explicitly do so with a "next input source" keyboard shortcut. Regardless if the "next app has a text input in focus" or not, the language I have set (english or my local one), sticks when I change apps.
      - rado 3y ago
        Also, open Spotlight when in an app with alternative input language. Spotlight should switch to default, but it doesn’t, and adopts the unwanted alternative language.
        coldtea 3y ago
        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 tried and don't really want - to have apps remember their own input language each. Then the same toggle looks to be able to cover that, but perhaps not well, as you say).
yungporko 3y ago
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 could figure out. these are just the bugs i can think of off the top of my head which have existed for literal years: - on iphone, the haptic and sound feedback from tapping letters on the keyboard has a noticeable lag to it half the time. - on iphone, the volume of all system sounds shoots up to 100% without warning, even if you're wearing headphones. this bug also reverses the volume level, so you have to turn the volume up to make it go down. - on iphone, browser tabs just get stuck displaying one page (or sometimes nothing at all) no matter how many times to try to navigate or refresh, and you have to either kill safari and restart it or close the tab and open a new one. - on mac laptops, the battery drains while sleeping at a rate of about 20% per day. i've been a mac user since 2015 but only since i got an m1 max macbook pro, nearly every time i open the lid, it's dead. - on mac, sometimes external storage just doesnt show up at all, restarting doesn't work, waiting doesn't work, you literally just have to try again tomorrow and hope for the best. - on apple music (any platform), music will just stop and it will tell you that another device is trying to play music when it isn't. sometimes this doesnt happen for weeks, sometimes it happens 4 times in a single song and goes on for hours so you have to just stop trying to listen to music. - on any platform with siri, it will just reset to the default voice/accent regularly, making all the other options useless. - on any platform with siri, you ask it to remind you about something in x minutes or at x time, siri confirms that it will, then 1/10 times it just... doesn't. - on apple tv, you randomly lose the ability to navigate left inside whatever app you're in, so you have to kill it and restart it. - on apple tv, the picture just freezes but the audio continues. you have to just turn it off and on again. happens every 2-3 days. - on apple tv, about half the time, the native voice search forces you to repeat your search 3 times. you tell it what to search for, it shows up for a split second, then clears. you have to do it three times. this one alone is worth ditching apple over. if i ever find out who introduced this bug and cross paths with them, i will physically attack them on sight. i actually can even think of more bugs, but i'm bored of typing.
- 3y ago
j_4 3y ago
Hey, Windows has had a related-ish bug forever too! Go to device properties and change L/R balance to be unequal. Turn sound down to 0. Turn it back up and balance is equal again.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
Man I remember having to deal with this multiple times a week, weirdly it stopped maybe from the 2015 MBP onwards for me never encountered it again and assumed it was fixed. But all my computers between the Titanium Powerbook and then had it.
- atribecalledqst 3y ago
  At first I was thinking "huh, I don't think I've ever seen this before..." but come to think of it, there have definitely been a few freak occurrences of the balance suddenly getting out of whack. It throws me for a loop at first because usually the balance suddenly going out in headphones is an indicator that one or the other side is starting to die. It's pretty rare, I've only seen it a few times, but yeah. Pretty obnoxious
- frankfrank13 3y ago
  Agreed, I thought it had been fixed as I haven't seen it on any mac newer than 2013. I really hope someone someday breaks down why this happens. I can't believe its only manifested in <10% of the total macs I've ever used/owned.
api 3y ago
It seems like lots of very mature software projects have these bugs that just hang around forever. Someone could fix them. Someone should fix them. Nobody fixes them. My own projects have a few so I am guilty. Maybe they give the project “character.”
- Eric_WVGG 3y ago
  My favorite is… - set desktop icons to align to grid - have say half a dozen icons in the top right of your desktop - plug into an external display - the icons will be sort of in the same place, but not actually aligned. (Moving a single icon will cause it to go to an unpredictable place because everything around it is stepping over the place you’re trying to drop it.) This has been the behavior for every version of MacOS at least going back to 10.2 Jaguar (2003).
peachpossum 3y ago
I used to own a 2014 VW GTI and would play my preferred audio from a USB/Lightning connected iPod touch through its entertainment system. The audio system was flipping L/R balance every few minutes, without any input from my end (volume adjustments, play/pause, etc.). It drove me crazy. I always chalked this up to a quality issue with the VW entertainment system since I have never experienced this on any other playback system in my home or in my other cars. I've heard the occasional random pop or click audio artifacts from my Mac mini home recording studio setup but never experienced the L/R balance issue. And with the more recent macOS versions (Ventura and Sonoma) I don't think I've heard any audio clicks or pops. I'm using an older Roland OctaCapture audio interface, but have tried the Focusrite Scarletts and some MOTU devices without incident.
te_chris 3y ago
I’ve just switched to using a big screen with laptop closed and a usb webcam. I’m now on my second webcam model (razer kiyo pro, after logi brio 500 was not good) and still people I call say my audio distorts after about 5 minutes. It’s so frustrating and seems to be a problem with Mac usb audio. I actually produce music too, but have a thunderbolt interface so that works better
lanthade 3y ago
Apple audio issues are definitely nothing new. I recall as far back as the early 00’s problems with stereo separation on apple laptops. This was especially apparent when playing backing tracks out the headphone port where it was a mono tracks/click pair. The click could be clearly heard on the tracks line which is a bad thing for the house mix. That particular problem was hardware though. If you used an external usb interface the problem went away.
anentropic 3y ago
I used to experience this all the time and had a 3rd party app installed to lock the balance to centre. But it seems to have gone away in last couple of versions of macOS, have not had the 'fixer' installed since I got an M1 and it hasn't occurred again for me (so... Sonoma and the one before). If I recall, the original reason for the bug was a stupid keyboard shortcut (helpfully mapped to "f*** up my audio balance") that was easy to trigger by accident, with no visual feedback to know that you'd done it. I wonder if it's locale-specific, maybe some keyboard layouts or whatever still have it mapped.
pdimitar 3y ago
Long ranty post. I'll use the occasion to crap on macOS because yes, I experienced this, not to mention random devices disconnecting in conditions of higher memory pressure (i.e. starting a k8s cluster and doing tests, then tearing it down, then starting another etc.) -- one time even my keyboard disconnected which was annoying to say the least. To this day my $300 dock sometimes doesn't at all get detected after I wake up my iMac Pro. A $8000 machine and an OS developed by trillion+ $ dollar company cannot properly wake up all devices after sleep. Yep. :| I appreciate macOS as a system for users where SIP et. al. prevent people from shooting themselves in the foot -- Apple has mostly solved the problem of careless users clicking on stuff they really shouldn't. (Excluding phishing.) But as a programmer, I am now on a course to gradually and eventually move back to Linux. Why? - Everything is just faster. A Manjaro XFCE with the latest kernel (6.7 as of 2024-FEB-14) just makes everything fly on my AMD 5500U laptop. Telegram starts in 0.5s while my iMac Pro needs at least 5 seconds. Firefox with all its addons boots up in about 1.5s. I know all of the lag and delays are related to security scanning but it does get tiring after several years. As a programmer I want to say "everything in these directories is trusted, I'll suffer if I am wrong, now leave me alone" which of course I can't do. - Related to the above: Intel Macs are likely unofficially now second-class citizens and frak all of us who invested in them, right? The iMac Pro costed me $8000 and I'll use it until it blows up in my face, that's non-negotiable for a $8000 machine. So I'd think whatever performance gains or optimizations are being done for macOS, the Intel architecture is probably a persona non grata already. - Just lately Erlang's team fixed an absurd issue where due to JIT using memory mapping macOS literally shows me a popup while I am coding! Save an Elixir file in my NeoVim (which invokes the LS) and whoops, there, you have a micro popup that disappears after ~0.2s. And it can be a problem if you cancel it (has an X button inside which I assume is focused by default) but seriously, just working in your editor leads to micro popups that disappear fractions of a second later... WTF. And their fix? They moved to use another memory mapping API. Which is a workaround in fact, not a fix. I feel for them so hard. - A lot of goodies are hidden behind paid software which is 100% fine by me (obviously we all want to be paid for our work) but it does send a signal that Apple doesn't care much -- iStat Menus is a good example and SoundSource is probably the best example (and strongly related to the original article); why do we need SoundSource at all? Why is this not handled by the OS? And again on the money issue, as much as I want to support other programmers, it starts feeling like you are being nickel-and-dimed as time passes by. Honestly, after using macOS full time for about 4.5 years, I am not impressed. I like the displays a lot and I know I would miss them dearly and my eyes will be unhappy which is basically my main reason for sticking with macOS for a workstation (well that plus the $8000 investment I made 4.5 years ago which let's be honest, has paid for itself already, many times over). Another thing I do like is the menu bar and I'll duplicate that functionality on my XFCE laptop soon enough, so not much of a loss. I believe at one point I'll just start ssh-ing into my AMD 5500U laptop so I can reap the benefits of the amazing iMac Pro display while still having Linux's benefits on my side. And I didn't even mention how much I can tinker with it e.g. I wanted to experiment with various ZFS and bcachefs setups and of course I couldn't do that without a VM... did I mention I never found a truly good VM manager for macOS? But that tinker-ability is just the tip of the iceberg and this comment became huge enough already. If you have gotten this far -- any ideas how to properly secure an XFCE environment? I'll need to install Chrome and Zoom at one point but I don't trust their creators to not pwn my system the moment I run the installer and as we know X11 is not at all secure; likely both softwares will record each of my keystrokes and upload them somewhere. So, anybody knows how to properly isolate a desktop program on XFCE? And if that's not possible on XFCE I am open to migrate to whatever other DE allows it. Thanks for reading.
aaronbrethorst 3y ago
I first experienced this on a titanium G4 PowerBook in 2001 or 2002 on Mac OS X 10.1 or whatever the current version was then. The bug is probably as old as macOS.
ukuina 3y ago
Does not surprise me. I recently discovered that interrupting the close-all-apps-before-reboot workflow when applying a macOS upgrade (e.g., "don't terminate my terminal process yet, one sec, okay, I'm good to reboot now") requires a redo of the ENTIRE update process (including redownloading the 13GB update!)
- mmis1000 3y ago
  The exact same thing applies to online reinstall of the macos. If your network has even the slightest jitter, you download the whole 10gb from the start. It was blowing my mind that there is a download manager/system, in 2024, can't even resume download a file after encounter network problem. Come on, you really shouldn't assume everybody have a perfect network that can just download a file from 0% to 100% without problem. That is almost a dream in a office room with shit tons of 2.4g / 5g devices.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    I'm similarly amazed when I'm downloading something from Google Drive and I get jitter -- Google Drive does not support restarting, so if it's a 10GB file, here we go again from the beginning. What is it with these huge corps missing the simple stuff?
- okamiueru 3y ago
  Even funnier is upgrading ventura could brick your Mx if you had changed the refresh rate on the display.
fortran77 3y ago
It's odd that most Apple users don't care. And funny that Apple advocates claim that Apple is the high-quality audio choice when the stock hardware isn't.
ben7799 3y ago
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 and I kind of think Mac OS is getting worse, but this one hasn't hit me.
- quitit 3y ago
  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.
  - noSyncCloud 3y ago
    Err... Wasn't the entire point of the post that the bug is nearly 10 years old?
    - theamk 3y ago
      the person said they download 3rd party app 10 years ago I don't see anything there about contacting Apple
      - jcparkyn 3y ago
        Maybe I'm optimistic, but I find it unlikely that someone went to the time to build this app, maintained it for the last eight years, and thousands of people went to the trouble to find it, install it, and leave a review, all without anyone contacting apple about their problem. Edit: Apple was well aware of this issue (or a similar one), 12 years ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20221205223648/https://support.apple.com/kb/TA22305?locale=en_US https://web.archive.org/web/20221205223648/https://support.a... Their response? "deal with it"
knodi 3y ago
Shocker!! MacOS seems to have turned into a red-headed stepchild for Apple.
exabrial 3y ago
Pssh. Fixing bugs gets in the way of "innovation" these days you un-innovative fool.
serguzest 3y ago
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.
theultdev 3y ago
Never had this issue, but I do put the left audio to 90% since my wife's handmedown left ear airpod is dying. It evens it out fine. Will replace at 99%.
MilaM 3y ago
I had a recent UPS from Eaton connected to my iMac with USB. Every couple of days, it would not wake up from sleep. The only remedy is to power-cycle. Not funny. I have the same UPS now connected to my Raspberry Pi 4, and it works without issues. Apple doesn't care very much about third-party hardware, in my experience.
gok 3y ago
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 ability to adjust its levels out of band with the host audio stack. Thus your laptop has to periodically poll the device to find out what the current actual audio levels are. When your laptop sees that the volume per channel is not equal, it doesn't know if this was caused by the device itself adjusting the balance or the volume adjustment message being ignored. So for example: 1. User tells laptop to increase volume from 50% to 60% 2. Laptop tells device's right channel to go to 60% (success) 3. Laptop tells device's left channel to go to 60% (failure) 4. Laptop checks with audio device, sees 60% on right and 50% on left 5. Laptop changes audio balance to be nudged to the right There are some ways to mitigate the problem. The audio stack could try to detect when its level commands are being dropped, but that risks the audio stack and device "fighting" over the correct volume. Better closer-to-realtime scheduling can reduce the risk of messages being dropped.
- theamk 3y ago
  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.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Who should detect, who should retry, and how? I don’t know the macOS audio stack in detail, but I work on state synchronization problems in distributed systems and my intuition for problems like this is that the “why not just” solution almost never solves such a bug completely.
P_I_Staker 3y ago
For some reason they think basic features of apple music should never work. Guess I'm the problem, because this is unusable, yet I won't cancel. P.S. I'm specifically talking about certain playlist management features not working. Specifically, the "add next" simply has never worked well. I think it's only on PC, but they do something to make your playlists unusable, if they're large. I think shuffle doesn't work at all for my uses (perhaps for tiny playlists where shuffle barely matters) Weirdly, most of this seems by design, although it's not hard to see why. Apple doesn't want shuffle to compete with their algorithm, but WTF did we end up with? Streaming services riddled with user hostile design.
ttfkam 3y ago
That's nothing. Even though the hardware has supported it for at least 15 years, MacOS still doesn't have support for MST (DisplayPort daisy-chaining). Instead of just plugging one cable in and having two externals connected to each other, we've all either had to use a cable per monitor (using two scarce ports on the laptop) or buy a $100-$300 box that will do the work for us. Back when installing Windows on a MacBook with Bootcamp was pretty common, it was galling to have Windows support MST perfectly fine on the Apple hardware while MacOS reverted to simple (useless) mirroring.
olliej 3y ago
I find the general scheduling of high cpu tasks to be annoying - start enough compilation threads going and you get network stoppage :-/
lloydatkinson 3y ago
But the audio/music people out there breathlessly tell everyone mac is the best for audio work?
ongytenes 3y ago
A friend of mine told me he prefers Apple because "it just works". The only Apple I used never had this problem. But then again, the first thing I did with it was replace the OS with Linux. :-P
musicale 3y ago
So it's not just me. Good to know.

336 points by faebi 3y ago

Sakos 3y ago

What's the audio left/right balance bug?

madaxe_again 3y ago
The audio balance on Apple computers changes randomly, and has done so for at least a decade. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/79384/audio-balance-changes-randomly-in-macbook-pro-retina-15-inch-mid-2012 https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/79384/audio-balanc...
- thepangolino 3y ago
  [dead]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- unwind 3y ago
  Following the link, and a few more, describes at as changing "when volume buttons are pressed during high CPU load". That is perhaps random-seeming, but also way different from actually being reandom. I have never used a (modern) Mac long enough to listen to audio, so I have no experience with this I just thought it sounded odd. Now having learned that, I really (really) wonder how such a bug can happen, and how it can stay ignored for so long by the always-ranted-about masters of vertically integrated luxury computers. More the former, though. It sounds almost as if there already is software somewhere that is doing something to maintain the proper balance (perhaps due to bugs in the hardware), and then that something becomes CPU-starved and/or interrupted when the volume changes, and doesn't resume properly. This is a wild guess straight outta ... Hampton, I have no clue about Mac hardware or macOS internals. Fun to think about, though! I hope they fix it for real, soon!
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    > Now having learned that, I really (really) wonder how such a bug can happen, and how it can stay ignored for so long by the always-ranted-about masters of vertically integrated luxury computers. More the former, though. My first guess was that "volume up" is actually "increase volume on left channel" and "increase volume on right channel" And when there's high CPU load, one of those commands gets lost or ignored for some reason.
    - unwind 3y ago
      That's an even simpler (=better, often) theory! Thanks!
    - coldtea 3y ago
      And they can't synchronize this?
      - duped 3y ago
        Normally the solution to this is to have a pair of parameters, pan and gain and compute the discrete channel gains from those two parameters. That way there's no synchronization and you can handle changes to those parameters independently. It sounds like they have inverted the relationship between what is displayed to the users and what is used by the machine.
  - madaxe_again 3y ago
    There are worse bugs that happen under high CPU load - I reported that you can interact with applications behind the hibernate Lock Screen… 9 years ago. You still can.
- NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
  I use my Macs for audio a lot, including with headphones, and have never experienced this in 20 years.
  - 15457345234 3y ago
    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 'live' using a USB output sink, i.e. that you can DJ with it. Now apparently there's a game-breaking bug? For 10 years? And it's a really really big deal? Hmm.
    - polotics 3y ago
      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.
- sammorrowdrums 3y ago
  Yep, I’ve very much discovered and confirmed this behaviour independently, I was so shocked to learn that it was a known issue. I know it’s silly but it helped me with imposter syndrome to see such a major OS that prides itself on seamless “it just works” experiences tolerate bugs like this. That and the fact if you airplay a movie to Apple TV it thinks you want it to cast over the top of it with random advert videos in your web browser, so you can’t watch and browse. We’re all human I guess ;)
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    Does Apple have a public bug tracker?
    - SllX 3y ago
      No. They have a black hole you can toss your bug reports into, and they’ll swear up and down that past the event horizon they’ll see it, but you more likely than not will never hear about it again.
  - cm2187 3y ago
    But a lot of those bugs are basic functionalities, it is just that they are not the path Apple wants you to take. For years now, and across iphone models and iOS versions, my iphone randomizes the artwork of the mp3s in the music app (ie display the wrong album cover). I see people complaining about that in forums but I guess if you are not using Apple Music they don't care. I don't seem to be able to copy files from my iphone onto a windows desktop. Tried several cables, the transfer fails after a few GB. I guess if you are not syncing your files through iCloud they don't care. A bug recently corrupted the iphone mail app. It wouldn't sync mails anymore, in fact would display old mails from the wrong account (I have multiple setup). I only fixed it by deleting the accounts and recreating them. That's using ActiveSync. But I guess if you don't use an apple email they don't care. Another bug on my ipad. The USB-C DAC often fails to be recognised. Tried several DAC. I thought it was a hardware problem (usb port damaged), except that few hardware problems are resolved by rebooting. But if you don't use apple wireless headphones they don't care. These are basic functionalities, but not using the main path which happens to be the most profitable to Apple. Apple's reputation for quality is inconsistent with my experience of their products.
- tgv 3y ago
  I've been using macs since the 90s for "serious amateur" music production, and I listen to music while working on an MBP daily, both via the headphone jack and via a USB audio interface, and I've never encountered that. Is there no idea what triggers it?
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Quickly changing the system volume while the system is under heavy CPU load, plus chance.
    - tgv 3y ago
      That's indeed something I've never done. So the culprit is that the volume knob sends multiple messages and they get lost or something?
- butlike 3y ago
  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.log(j); } } console.log('herewegoagain'); } }();
  - ianschmitz 3y ago
    In my experience the slider definitely moves. You can see it in real time with the settings page open
rickdeckard 3y ago
To quote Apple's own (no longer available) KB-article from 2012 [1]: "In some cases the audio balance may unexpectedly drift towards the left or right channel. This can happen if you rapidly press the volume up or down keys while the computer's microprocessor is under heavy load." [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120630125615/https://support.apple.com/kb/TA22305 https://web.archive.org/web/20120630125615/https://support.a...
- rob74 3y ago
  Wow, I can't even start to imagine how this bug came into existence (and why it should take so long to fix it)...
- butlike 3y ago
  Do you think this issue would persist if I BootCamp'd Windows?

naveen_k 3y ago

If you use AssistiveTouch on your iPhone or iPad with a customized top-level menu, every iOS/iPadOS update resets it to default settings. Apple hasn't fixed it for over 8+ years either.

fotta 3y ago
That doesn't happen for me and I've been using AssistiveTouch for 10 years now
- naveen_k 3y ago
  Try changing the number of icons (Customize Top Level Menu) on the AssistiveTouch to anything other than the default six before your next os update. It’ll reset to the default layout.

trilbyglens 3y ago

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

shiroiushi 3y ago
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?
- rogual 3y ago
  In the Jobs years it was because the person at the tob intrinsically gave a shit about making a good thing. But you're right, it certainly seems that's the kind of game Cook is playing. Better than Windows, but no better, and keep the extra money.
  - shiroiushi 3y ago
    It's a winning business strategy, especially when you have legions of die-hard customers who won't leave you. Microsoft has a similar situation (though many probably won't leave MS for different reasons), so it's in their business interest to increase profits by subjugating their customers with annoying ads baked into the OS. What do they have to lose? It's not like Apple's/MS's customers are going to switch to Linux (which has its own problems of course). To be fair to Apple, it does sound like this is a somewhat rare bug (only seen in high-load situations?). It's not as bad, I think, as ads in the OS. So, as you say, Apple just needs to be a little better than MS and that's good enough.
    - pohuing 3y ago
      Except apple does also put ads in their os. And you can't even permanently disable them, the iCloud nagware comes back every once in a while trying to sell me overpriced storage.
      - NoNoisle 3y ago

rented_mule 3y ago

I've been happily using an app available for free on the App Store to work around it for years now: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/balance-lock/id1019371109 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/balance-lock/id1019371109

addandsubtract 3y ago
That's the app linked in the tweet. Seems ridiculous that we need an app to fix this, though.
- andrelaszlo 3y ago
  At least it's free. I've paid for multiple 10$ apps that just work around macos bugs.

donatj 3y ago

It’s dumb that I have to run a resident program to fix this, but here we are - it fixes the problem. Otherwise every time I dock my laptop the audio is in some random balance. https://www.tunabellysoftware.com/balance_lock/ https://www.tunabellysoftware.com/balance_lock/

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

tmikaeld 3y ago

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 https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/132423 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32163114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32163114 [2] https://developer.apple.com/forums/search/?q=Popping+Sound https://developer.apple.com/forums/search/?q=Popping+Sound

donatj 3y ago
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…
- smcleod 3y ago
  I wonder if the clock source is getting out of whack with the DACs, it could be caused by extreme jitter.
- tmikaeld 3y ago
  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)
  - donatj 3y ago
    Well dang. I have had intention on buying a new DAC largely due to the issue; for better or worse there goes that plan.
    - tmikaeld 3y ago
      I haven't tried Apple "certified" Thunderbolt devices yet, but others in the huge Apple thread [0] has and still experience cracks/pops.

izacus 3y ago

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.

andrelaszlo 3y ago
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 year was a mistake.
- bzzzt 3y ago
  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.
  - andrelaszlo 3y ago
    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.
    - bzzzt 3y ago
      Most conferencing applications or sites use a separate 'preferred' microphone and select that one.
      - andrelaszlo 3y ago
        I'll look into if it has something to do with that. Thanks for the tip

Razengan 3y ago

Some longstanding bugs/limitations in macOS/iOS make me honestly wonder if any higher ups at Apple actually use their own products, or do they just have fleshbots (human assistants/secretaries) do everything for them..

zihotki 3y ago
You should first ask if those problems have any major impact and if they impact the higher ups. Probably the answer will be "no".

anon22981 3y ago

I’m not sure if a bug or a feature, but on two different iphones I’ve had the issue where the volume suddenly aggressively goes up or down without me pressing the volume button. Has happened at least in netflix and youtube. Always when I’m actively using the phone. Might an ill fitted case or something, but those phones had different cases. Anyone know if this is some bug or am I being dumb?

orf 3y ago
Happens to me with keyboard clicks on iOS: suddenly they jump from the standard low volume to very loud clacks.
4dm1r4lg3n3r4l 3y ago
With iOS 17 I started experiencing something similar. Whenever I use Control Center to decrease volume to zero, two out of ten times or so it moves it back to 15-20% (seems random). I have no idea if an app running in the background is causing this, or the OS, but is very annoying...
bombcar 3y ago
Mine (possibly related) is volume will look normal but be super quiet - touch the control at all and suddenly it’s as loud as it looked.

bichonnages 3y ago

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.

bzzzt 3y ago
You know you can check in the audio settings panel?

gexaha 3y ago

Wow, I always thought that it could be just my personal hearing issues, never could properly google the issue

nlunbeck 3y ago
I always thought my earbuds were wearing out unevenly, which may also be the case, but this is good to check up on every few months

Sandrasmith 3y ago

[dead]

alex_duf 3y ago

This is much older than 10 years https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/79384/audio-balance-changes-randomly-in-macbook-pro-retina-15-inch-mid-2012 https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/79384/audio-balanc...

NoNoisle 3y ago
Love how much older == 1 year
- alex_duf 3y ago
  First comment: >I've had this problem on multiple MacBooks (from my old Powerbook 15 from 2003 to prior to finding this question on my late 2011 MBP 13"). so about 21 years

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

kpmcc 3y ago

The fact that this has existed for so long and is common enough to warrant a third party program devoted to resolving the issue is an embarrassment for Apple. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/balance-lock/id1019371109?mt=12?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/balance-lock/id1019371109?mt=1...

10729287 3y ago
There are so many bugs and even more poor ergonomic choices that have been unfixed for years on Apple Devices. It's fascinating considering the whole cult regarding the company's so called attention to details.
- user_7832 3y ago
  Attention to detail, but only when they can market/advertise it, perhaps?
- MetalSnake 3y ago
  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 worse with each iteration).
  - cozzyd 3y ago
    I wish .DS_Store files were automatically gitignored... (though why should git fix such a stupid problem it didn't create...)
    - da768 3y ago
      Pretty easy with a global gitignore
      - 3y ago

goblin89 3y ago

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 seemingly everyone suffers from, is complete news to me. Sometimes I feel like I am living in a different reality…

danhau 3y ago
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.
- antomeie 3y ago
  For me, the mentioned balance issue is only happens on Apples AirPods. With wired audio devices, or third party bluetooth, I never noticed this.
faebi 3y ago
I can imagine, but it happens often to me. It takes some time to notice that something feels off, until I remember. With the app I get the audio-balance-restored notification every now and then. The thing is, it's annoying subtle.
SkyPuncher 3y ago
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.
- goblin89 3y ago
  IIUC this crackling has always happened to me regardless of the OS, both on macOS and Windows. It should be solvable by increasing audio buffer size (& therefore latency), getting better hardware, or bouncing/freezing tracks to audio.

rado 3y ago

Reminds me of my "favourite" macOS issue: alternative keyboard language input is carried over to the next app I switch to, or Spotlight. Almost 20 years of forcing me to switch back to the default language hundreds of times a day. Any idea if it can be fixed by an app? Thanks!

coldtea 3y ago
That has (since forever) been covered with a Settings toggle. Keyboard -> Input Sources [edit] -> Automatically switch to a document's input source. Checking it maintains different "active input source memory" per app. Unchecking it keeps a global "active input source".
- rado 3y ago
  This only works if the next app has a text input in focus.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Not sure what you mean. With this setting, I never have to "switch back to the default language", it only switches when I explicitly do so with a "next input source" keyboard shortcut. Regardless if the "next app has a text input in focus" or not, the language I have set (english or my local one), sticks when I change apps.
    - rado 3y ago
      Also, open Spotlight when in an app with alternative input language. Spotlight should switch to default, but it doesn’t, and adopts the unwanted alternative language.
      - coldtea 3y ago
        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 tried and don't really want - to have apps remember their own input language each. Then the same toggle looks to be able to cover that, but perhaps not well, as you say).

yungporko 3y ago

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 could figure out. these are just the bugs i can think of off the top of my head which have existed for literal years: - on iphone, the haptic and sound feedback from tapping letters on the keyboard has a noticeable lag to it half the time. - on iphone, the volume of all system sounds shoots up to 100% without warning, even if you're wearing headphones. this bug also reverses the volume level, so you have to turn the volume up to make it go down. - on iphone, browser tabs just get stuck displaying one page (or sometimes nothing at all) no matter how many times to try to navigate or refresh, and you have to either kill safari and restart it or close the tab and open a new one. - on mac laptops, the battery drains while sleeping at a rate of about 20% per day. i've been a mac user since 2015 but only since i got an m1 max macbook pro, nearly every time i open the lid, it's dead. - on mac, sometimes external storage just doesnt show up at all, restarting doesn't work, waiting doesn't work, you literally just have to try again tomorrow and hope for the best. - on apple music (any platform), music will just stop and it will tell you that another device is trying to play music when it isn't. sometimes this doesnt happen for weeks, sometimes it happens 4 times in a single song and goes on for hours so you have to just stop trying to listen to music. - on any platform with siri, it will just reset to the default voice/accent regularly, making all the other options useless. - on any platform with siri, you ask it to remind you about something in x minutes or at x time, siri confirms that it will, then 1/10 times it just... doesn't. - on apple tv, you randomly lose the ability to navigate left inside whatever app you're in, so you have to kill it and restart it. - on apple tv, the picture just freezes but the audio continues. you have to just turn it off and on again. happens every 2-3 days. - on apple tv, about half the time, the native voice search forces you to repeat your search 3 times. you tell it what to search for, it shows up for a split second, then clears. you have to do it three times. this one alone is worth ditching apple over. if i ever find out who introduced this bug and cross paths with them, i will physically attack them on sight. i actually can even think of more bugs, but i'm bored of typing.

3y ago

j_4 3y ago

Hey, Windows has had a related-ish bug forever too! Go to device properties and change L/R balance to be unequal. Turn sound down to 0. Turn it back up and balance is equal again.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago

Man I remember having to deal with this multiple times a week, weirdly it stopped maybe from the 2015 MBP onwards for me never encountered it again and assumed it was fixed. But all my computers between the Titanium Powerbook and then had it.

atribecalledqst 3y ago
At first I was thinking "huh, I don't think I've ever seen this before..." but come to think of it, there have definitely been a few freak occurrences of the balance suddenly getting out of whack. It throws me for a loop at first because usually the balance suddenly going out in headphones is an indicator that one or the other side is starting to die. It's pretty rare, I've only seen it a few times, but yeah. Pretty obnoxious
frankfrank13 3y ago
Agreed, I thought it had been fixed as I haven't seen it on any mac newer than 2013. I really hope someone someday breaks down why this happens. I can't believe its only manifested in <10% of the total macs I've ever used/owned.

api 3y ago

It seems like lots of very mature software projects have these bugs that just hang around forever. Someone could fix them. Someone should fix them. Nobody fixes them. My own projects have a few so I am guilty. Maybe they give the project “character.”

Eric_WVGG 3y ago
My favorite is… - set desktop icons to align to grid - have say half a dozen icons in the top right of your desktop - plug into an external display - the icons will be sort of in the same place, but not actually aligned. (Moving a single icon will cause it to go to an unpredictable place because everything around it is stepping over the place you’re trying to drop it.) This has been the behavior for every version of MacOS at least going back to 10.2 Jaguar (2003).

peachpossum 3y ago

I used to own a 2014 VW GTI and would play my preferred audio from a USB/Lightning connected iPod touch through its entertainment system. The audio system was flipping L/R balance every few minutes, without any input from my end (volume adjustments, play/pause, etc.). It drove me crazy. I always chalked this up to a quality issue with the VW entertainment system since I have never experienced this on any other playback system in my home or in my other cars. I've heard the occasional random pop or click audio artifacts from my Mac mini home recording studio setup but never experienced the L/R balance issue. And with the more recent macOS versions (Ventura and Sonoma) I don't think I've heard any audio clicks or pops. I'm using an older Roland OctaCapture audio interface, but have tried the Focusrite Scarletts and some MOTU devices without incident.

te_chris 3y ago

I’ve just switched to using a big screen with laptop closed and a usb webcam. I’m now on my second webcam model (razer kiyo pro, after logi brio 500 was not good) and still people I call say my audio distorts after about 5 minutes. It’s so frustrating and seems to be a problem with Mac usb audio. I actually produce music too, but have a thunderbolt interface so that works better

lanthade 3y ago

Apple audio issues are definitely nothing new. I recall as far back as the early 00’s problems with stereo separation on apple laptops. This was especially apparent when playing backing tracks out the headphone port where it was a mono tracks/click pair. The click could be clearly heard on the tracks line which is a bad thing for the house mix. That particular problem was hardware though. If you used an external usb interface the problem went away.

anentropic 3y ago

I used to experience this all the time and had a 3rd party app installed to lock the balance to centre. But it seems to have gone away in last couple of versions of macOS, have not had the 'fixer' installed since I got an M1 and it hasn't occurred again for me (so... Sonoma and the one before). If I recall, the original reason for the bug was a stupid keyboard shortcut (helpfully mapped to "f*** up my audio balance") that was easy to trigger by accident, with no visual feedback to know that you'd done it. I wonder if it's locale-specific, maybe some keyboard layouts or whatever still have it mapped.

pdimitar 3y ago

Long ranty post. I'll use the occasion to crap on macOS because yes, I experienced this, not to mention random devices disconnecting in conditions of higher memory pressure (i.e. starting a k8s cluster and doing tests, then tearing it down, then starting another etc.) -- one time even my keyboard disconnected which was annoying to say the least. To this day my $300 dock sometimes doesn't at all get detected after I wake up my iMac Pro. A $8000 machine and an OS developed by trillion+ $ dollar company cannot properly wake up all devices after sleep. Yep. :| I appreciate macOS as a system for users where SIP et. al. prevent people from shooting themselves in the foot -- Apple has mostly solved the problem of careless users clicking on stuff they really shouldn't. (Excluding phishing.) But as a programmer, I am now on a course to gradually and eventually move back to Linux. Why? - Everything is just faster. A Manjaro XFCE with the latest kernel (6.7 as of 2024-FEB-14) just makes everything fly on my AMD 5500U laptop. Telegram starts in 0.5s while my iMac Pro needs at least 5 seconds. Firefox with all its addons boots up in about 1.5s. I know all of the lag and delays are related to security scanning but it does get tiring after several years. As a programmer I want to say "everything in these directories is trusted, I'll suffer if I am wrong, now leave me alone" which of course I can't do. - Related to the above: Intel Macs are likely unofficially now second-class citizens and frak all of us who invested in them, right? The iMac Pro costed me $8000 and I'll use it until it blows up in my face, that's non-negotiable for a $8000 machine. So I'd think whatever performance gains or optimizations are being done for macOS, the Intel architecture is probably a persona non grata already. - Just lately Erlang's team fixed an absurd issue where due to JIT using memory mapping macOS literally shows me a popup while I am coding! Save an Elixir file in my NeoVim (which invokes the LS) and whoops, there, you have a micro popup that disappears after ~0.2s. And it can be a problem if you cancel it (has an X button inside which I assume is focused by default) but seriously, just working in your editor leads to micro popups that disappear fractions of a second later... WTF. And their fix? They moved to use another memory mapping API. Which is a workaround in fact, not a fix. I feel for them so hard. - A lot of goodies are hidden behind paid software which is 100% fine by me (obviously we all want to be paid for our work) but it does send a signal that Apple doesn't care much -- iStat Menus is a good example and SoundSource is probably the best example (and strongly related to the original article); why do we need SoundSource at all? Why is this not handled by the OS? And again on the money issue, as much as I want to support other programmers, it starts feeling like you are being nickel-and-dimed as time passes by. Honestly, after using macOS full time for about 4.5 years, I am not impressed. I like the displays a lot and I know I would miss them dearly and my eyes will be unhappy which is basically my main reason for sticking with macOS for a workstation (well that plus the $8000 investment I made 4.5 years ago which let's be honest, has paid for itself already, many times over). Another thing I do like is the menu bar and I'll duplicate that functionality on my XFCE laptop soon enough, so not much of a loss. I believe at one point I'll just start ssh-ing into my AMD 5500U laptop so I can reap the benefits of the amazing iMac Pro display while still having Linux's benefits on my side. And I didn't even mention how much I can tinker with it e.g. I wanted to experiment with various ZFS and bcachefs setups and of course I couldn't do that without a VM... did I mention I never found a truly good VM manager for macOS? But that tinker-ability is just the tip of the iceberg and this comment became huge enough already. If you have gotten this far -- any ideas how to properly secure an XFCE environment? I'll need to install Chrome and Zoom at one point but I don't trust their creators to not pwn my system the moment I run the installer and as we know X11 is not at all secure; likely both softwares will record each of my keystrokes and upload them somewhere. So, anybody knows how to properly isolate a desktop program on XFCE? And if that's not possible on XFCE I am open to migrate to whatever other DE allows it. Thanks for reading.

aaronbrethorst 3y ago

I first experienced this on a titanium G4 PowerBook in 2001 or 2002 on Mac OS X 10.1 or whatever the current version was then. The bug is probably as old as macOS.

ukuina 3y ago

Does not surprise me. I recently discovered that interrupting the close-all-apps-before-reboot workflow when applying a macOS upgrade (e.g., "don't terminate my terminal process yet, one sec, okay, I'm good to reboot now") requires a redo of the ENTIRE update process (including redownloading the 13GB update!)

mmis1000 3y ago
The exact same thing applies to online reinstall of the macos. If your network has even the slightest jitter, you download the whole 10gb from the start. It was blowing my mind that there is a download manager/system, in 2024, can't even resume download a file after encounter network problem. Come on, you really shouldn't assume everybody have a perfect network that can just download a file from 0% to 100% without problem. That is almost a dream in a office room with shit tons of 2.4g / 5g devices.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  I'm similarly amazed when I'm downloading something from Google Drive and I get jitter -- Google Drive does not support restarting, so if it's a 10GB file, here we go again from the beginning. What is it with these huge corps missing the simple stuff?
okamiueru 3y ago
Even funnier is upgrading ventura could brick your Mx if you had changed the refresh rate on the display.

fortran77 3y ago

It's odd that most Apple users don't care. And funny that Apple advocates claim that Apple is the high-quality audio choice when the stock hardware isn't.

ben7799 3y ago

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 and I kind of think Mac OS is getting worse, but this one hasn't hit me.

quitit 3y ago
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.
- noSyncCloud 3y ago
  Err... Wasn't the entire point of the post that the bug is nearly 10 years old?
  - theamk 3y ago
    the person said they download 3rd party app 10 years ago I don't see anything there about contacting Apple
    - jcparkyn 3y ago
      Maybe I'm optimistic, but I find it unlikely that someone went to the time to build this app, maintained it for the last eight years, and thousands of people went to the trouble to find it, install it, and leave a review, all without anyone contacting apple about their problem. Edit: Apple was well aware of this issue (or a similar one), 12 years ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20221205223648/https://support.apple.com/kb/TA22305?locale=en_US https://web.archive.org/web/20221205223648/https://support.a... Their response? "deal with it"

knodi 3y ago

Shocker!! MacOS seems to have turned into a red-headed stepchild for Apple.

exabrial 3y ago

Pssh. Fixing bugs gets in the way of "innovation" these days you un-innovative fool.

serguzest 3y ago

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.

theultdev 3y ago

Never had this issue, but I do put the left audio to 90% since my wife's handmedown left ear airpod is dying. It evens it out fine. Will replace at 99%.

MilaM 3y ago

I had a recent UPS from Eaton connected to my iMac with USB. Every couple of days, it would not wake up from sleep. The only remedy is to power-cycle. Not funny. I have the same UPS now connected to my Raspberry Pi 4, and it works without issues. Apple doesn't care very much about third-party hardware, in my experience.

gok 3y ago

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 ability to adjust its levels out of band with the host audio stack. Thus your laptop has to periodically poll the device to find out what the current actual audio levels are. When your laptop sees that the volume per channel is not equal, it doesn't know if this was caused by the device itself adjusting the balance or the volume adjustment message being ignored. So for example: 1. User tells laptop to increase volume from 50% to 60% 2. Laptop tells device's right channel to go to 60% (success) 3. Laptop tells device's left channel to go to 60% (failure) 4. Laptop checks with audio device, sees 60% on right and 50% on left 5. Laptop changes audio balance to be nudged to the right There are some ways to mitigate the problem. The audio stack could try to detect when its level commands are being dropped, but that risks the audio stack and device "fighting" over the correct volume. Better closer-to-realtime scheduling can reduce the risk of messages being dropped.

theamk 3y ago
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.
- lxgr 3y ago
  Who should detect, who should retry, and how? I don’t know the macOS audio stack in detail, but I work on state synchronization problems in distributed systems and my intuition for problems like this is that the “why not just” solution almost never solves such a bug completely.

P_I_Staker 3y ago

For some reason they think basic features of apple music should never work. Guess I'm the problem, because this is unusable, yet I won't cancel. P.S. I'm specifically talking about certain playlist management features not working. Specifically, the "add next" simply has never worked well. I think it's only on PC, but they do something to make your playlists unusable, if they're large. I think shuffle doesn't work at all for my uses (perhaps for tiny playlists where shuffle barely matters) Weirdly, most of this seems by design, although it's not hard to see why. Apple doesn't want shuffle to compete with their algorithm, but WTF did we end up with? Streaming services riddled with user hostile design.

ttfkam 3y ago

That's nothing. Even though the hardware has supported it for at least 15 years, MacOS still doesn't have support for MST (DisplayPort daisy-chaining). Instead of just plugging one cable in and having two externals connected to each other, we've all either had to use a cable per monitor (using two scarce ports on the laptop) or buy a $100-$300 box that will do the work for us. Back when installing Windows on a MacBook with Bootcamp was pretty common, it was galling to have Windows support MST perfectly fine on the Apple hardware while MacOS reverted to simple (useless) mirroring.

olliej 3y ago

I find the general scheduling of high cpu tasks to be annoying - start enough compilation threads going and you get network stoppage :-/

lloydatkinson 3y ago

But the audio/music people out there breathlessly tell everyone mac is the best for audio work?

ongytenes 3y ago

A friend of mine told me he prefers Apple because "it just works". The only Apple I used never had this problem. But then again, the first thing I did with it was replace the OS with Linux. :-P

musicale 3y ago

So it's not just me. Good to know.