It was reported 5 years ago by me, many many times. Can you please try with a different (modern) router and see if that helps? Can you also try: Download some local music. Disable all network devices. Restart the Mac. Then play the local music and see if it still happens? See my comments above, I'm 100% certain that it's triggered by streaming audio/media over the network.

I've sent MANY there, it's been +5 years and it keep getting ignored.

Please let me know if it works, you can also try the offline variant: - Download some local music. - Disable all network devices. - Restart the Mac. - Then play the local music and see if it still happens? On my end it never happens any more, after switching the router OS (I also bought a new router, none have the issues)

Did you try switching the router to a modern one? Or try it offline? Download some local music. - Disable all network devices. - Restart the Mac. - Then play the local music and see if it still happens? On my end it never happens any more, after switching the router OS (I also bought a new router, also clean, if i switch band to my old router it's back)

In our office it's triggered by streaming media over the network, it causes an IO overflow and it seems to be a fault in the T1 and T2 chips (Intel & Apple silicon). When we switched to a new router, the issues was gone on every mac in the office. You can try this yourself, by disconnecting networking entirely and play media locally - you'll notice that there is no longer any sound issues no matter the load-level.

@jodythai It is not enough to disable network, you need to disable network and do a full restart - then test it. Because once the network has triggered the IO issue, it will persist until reset.

Only occurs on external audio, like USB or thunderbolt sound cards. The internal speakers work fine, never had an issue there.

We've done new installs on several M2 Macs in the office, all of them have the issue.

I've had it re-appear too, even on offline Macs in the office. It's a hardware issue, without a doubt, probably attributed to the T1/T2 chips, because Macs before that didn't have the issue.

Thanks for the report! It's definitely a hardware/driver issue, I have a Mac Studio with M1 Pro and a Macbook Pro with M2 and both have it with sound out via USB - but it's clear that software can lessen the issue from occurring. For example, on Plex triggers it frequently and it won't go away until a restart of audiod daemon - but not when using tidal and avoiding Plex, there's never a trigger of the issue.

Highly doubt it. When you change that setting, the audiod service will reset and it will be gone for a few hours - then it's back again.