Indeed, this is INSANE. Been an apple dev for 20 years and just picked up a new 16" M1 running 12.0.1. I've written software licensed by Apple. Consistently, I am seeing this issue. If I have audio playing friskyradio.com in a Chrome tab and when building stuff in Unity, the audio immediately and consistently crackles horribly. Clearly there is a live audio starvation or race issue where audio is getting hosed the second there is any load (i.e. Xcode and the iOS simulator only prime it). I'm seeing this while I check out large git projects or do builds in Unity. It is JAW-DROPPING that Apple has yet to address this issue. My heart goes out to people here who have been waiting on this fix for over a year now. There was a day when Apple engineers would be EMBARRASSED to have this level of bug active for SO LONG. If this issue (and Apple's negligence) has persisted for this long, across so many of their hardware lines, this is solid evidence that Apple has become the new Microsoft, so beware. Guys, let's support each other on this issue and vote good posts up so an Apple manager can find this, champion it, and let us know how any of this is ok when buying a $4k machine.