The MacBook Air speaker crackling issue and how I deal with it
I have been using my M1 MacBook Air for 10 months, I always use Bluetooth headphones and I haven’t quite used the built-in speaker.
A few weeks ago I noticed the Mac startup sound feels a bit crackle in the left speaker, sometimes it also happens when I was watching videos.
Investigating the issue
I think it might be related to the frequency of the sound it’s playing. So I did a test and found it happens at around 80Hz.
When I played the tone for about 2 seconds the left speaker started crackling. Then I paused for a moment and resumed, it seemed fine at first then started crackling again after 2 seconds. That means the crackling sound was not from the video, but my machine.
The 80Hz tone must match the natural frequency of something inside the chassis, making it resonate hence the crackling sound was produced.
