Macbook Pro: Popping in audio

[gsilver]

I'm occasionally hearing popping in the audio on my Mid-2015 Macbook Pro (running OSX El Capitan)
The popping seems to happen randomly and infrequently (maybe once or twice an hour, but that's still annoying over a full work day), and seems to be getting louder.

It can happen while audio is playing.


Any ideas on how to fix this?

 

[Zepher]

plug in headphones and see if the popping goes through the headphones or the speakers. could be a faulty logic board or amp.
also could be a bad capacitor.

 

[gsilver]

The popping is through the headphones (it's too noisy in the office to hear it over the speakers, and I won't be using those in a public space, anyway)

I went ahead and bought an AudioQuest Dragonfly Red to (hopefully) improve playback/eliminate the popping noise (and an external amp/dac did fix the audio popping on my desktop), but was greeted with a loud pop mere minutes after starting to listen to a podcast (and verified that it wasn't a defect of the podcast recording when it happened again).

So, it doesn't even seem limited to the onboard audio.

 

[Archer1212]

Have you tried different headphones?
Is the macbook pro plugged in? If so, with two or three prong connection? Does it happen when on battery? (Narrowing down if the issues is a bad ground)

 

[AVT]

I've had this issue on Windows. Updating audio drivers fixed it. No such issue on Mac OS X.

 

[gsilver]

Have you tried different headphones?
Is the macbook pro plugged in? If so, with two or three prong connection? Does it happen when on battery? (Narrowing down if the issues is a bad ground)

The Macbook is plugged in, running off of a power cable running from an Apple Thunderbolt display (3 prong). I'll try it unplugged and with the AC adapter (2-prong) the next time I work from home (it won't work with the external displays when unplugged.

Same problem with different headphones and plugging the Dragonfly into either the USB port on the Macbook itself as well as the USB port on the display.

Edit:
Actually... The popping is definitely louder when using a USB port on the display. HOWEVER, it also seems to disconnect entirely and has to be unplugged and plugged back in more often on the USB ports on the laptop...

I think that I have a ground tester. I'll check the outlets at my desk.

 

[Archer1212]

I've had this issue on Windows. Updating audio drivers fixed it. No such issue on Mac OS X.

Kinda, and that was going to be my next suggestion if the grounding is not the issue. To my knowledge there is not an easy/direct way from apple to reinstall JUST the audio drivers. Not saying it cant be done, just no method that is know to my former Apple Genius training.

What I would suggest would be to look into a reinstall of the OS. No need to wipe the system, just boot into recovery and perform a reinstall. That will reinstall the latest system files for the OS installed.

If its not a ground, and reinstalling the OS does not fix it, then I am at a loss of ideas. Since you have tried different USB ports between the system and the thunderbolt display that eliminates at least something bad on your logic board.

 

[AVT]

Kinda, and that was going to be my next suggestion if the grounding is not the issue. To my knowledge there is not an easy/direct way from apple to reinstall JUST the audio drivers. Not saying it cant be done, just no method that is know to my former Apple Genius training.

What I would suggest would be to look into a reinstall of the OS. No need to wipe the system, just boot into recovery and perform a reinstall. That will reinstall the latest system files for the OS installed.

If its not a ground, and reinstalling the OS does not fix it, then I am at a loss of ideas. Since you have tried different USB ports between the system and the thunderbolt display that eliminates at least something bad on your logic board.

Indeed, it's an extremely strange issue. You can try clearing the kext cache, but I honestly doubt that's where the problem is, because Mac OS X really doesn't handle drivers like Windows. Overall, it's not clear what the problem is.