2018 MacBook Pro Owners Experiencing Crackling Audio

When you spend upwards of $1,300 on a laptop, you expect it to work flawlessly from day one and hopefully for its entire lifespan. With the recent release of the 2018 MacBook Pro ($999.95 at Amazon) , that's certainly not the case with another fault, this time involving audio output, appearing for some owners.

Last month it was discovered that the Core i9 MacBook Pro was experiencing cooling problems that killed performance. Apple investigated and discovered there was a performance throttling problem and issued a fix. Thankfully, all that was required is a firmware patch. But now there's another problem and it may not be so easy to solve.

As MacRumors reports, multiple videos are appearing of MBP owners playing audio through the built-in speakers on the laptop and experiencing crackling sounds. The severity varies greatly, but you can't fail to notice it as the music plays.

The crackling doesn't seem to be software or service related as it is being experienced when audio is played through iTunes, YouTube, GarageBand, or when running Windows via Boot Camp. The best guesses for the cause so far include radio interference through a lack of shielding in the MBP, audio drivers not working correctly, faulty speakers, or the new Apple T2 chip, which among other things is the audio controller for the MacBook Pro.

Owners (and Apple) will be hoping it's a problem that can be fixed with a software update. If it does turn out to be a lack of shielding or faulty T2 chips then that's a big headache for Apple who would probably have to offer free repairs to anyone experiencing the crackling.

No doubt Apple is looking into the fault, which doesn't seem to be that widespread at the moment. Could it just be one bad batch of hardware?