I am curious are you just connecting your Mackie to the Mac via it's stereo headphone out?
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Mac Audio Balance Bug That Apple Knew About 12 Years Ago Still Exists
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Unfortunately agree. There are some that were clearly always along for the ride but they probably could have given to an intern for the summer to see what they could do with it. Chess and Photo Booth come to mind. Photo Booth actually went slightly backwards in one version of OS (we lost some of the Effects options). No one is buying the computer for these but it's always fun to see what can be done with them. And every once in a while you might get a Minesweeper...
Then there's Finder, everything in Utilities, Image Capture, Calendar, Contacts, etc. It's not that they don't work at all but for a company that seems to change the UI/UX just because, it's odd that they've had no new ideas here for 20 years.
Of course we did get a new System Preferences after 20 years...and maybe we're better off if this team leaves well enough alone...
Vindication, wow. Never knew this was a bug, but for the longest time, I thought my headphone jack was broken because the right channel had no audio. Eventually stumbled across this setting for some unrelated reason, saw it was way off, and was baffled because I didn’t remember ever changing it. Nice to know I’m not (that) crazy, at least. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised Apple couldn’t be bothered to fix it.
What a surprise.. they rarely fix bugs. Only when Apple Pay or other revenue generating apps are down then they jump on it.
For example, continuity hasn’t worked properly since launch, switching between user accounts was breaking it until a year ago and still as of today if you type a message on iMessage and try to use continuity on another device the text you typed doesn’t transfer across. But in the Apple Store they advertise on the mac screens how you can start an activity on a device and finish it on another.
The software team is in shambles. 🤡
For example, continuity hasn’t worked properly since launch, switching between user accounts was breaking it until a year ago and still as of today if you type a message on iMessage and try to use continuity on another device the text you typed doesn’t transfer across. But in the Apple Store they advertise on the mac screens how you can start an activity on a device and finish it on another.
The software team is in shambles. 🤡
Steve approved the interfaces for QuickTime 4 and Sherlock 2, which both threw away established interfaces for wildly inferior ones. The public betas and version 10.0 of Mac OS X were a hot mess design-wise. The centered Apple logo in the menu bar, the non-customizable toolbars, the tiled Dock. It wasn’t until user feedback started pouring in that the UI became useable. So Steve’s own taste in software design might be questionable.
If I could just get some sort of OpenBSD/Linux hybrid that ran 3rd-party MacOS software I'd be there...
And would be nice to have some way to salvage the few protected video/movie files I've bought. Some of them I could probably download from Youtube but some of them would be hard to get elsewhere.
This bug seems rare, never saw it. But why not update the audio engine for more granular control of audio from apps? Easy to use should not mean simplistic and barebones.
I only see it when docked via thunderbolt. Builtin speakers have never had the issue, that I have noticed.
Yeah, I've only had it when using speakers or headphones plugged into the 3.5mm socket. I don't really have any need to do that these days, but I just tried plugging in my Sony headphones and wouldn't you know it, within 20 mins and a few plugs/unplugs, the audio was unbalanced (although it also seemed to correct itself on the next plug-in, which i've never seen it do before).
One of those bugs that won't really affect most people but is still pretty inexcusable.
The impact may be minor, but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily easy to fix. The app is a workaround, it doesn't fix it. And it doesn't seem to be as widely known as you might think. In my experience, it only happens when docked to my Caldigit TS3+, and never when undocked.
L
You’re probably right. I’m still relishing the mental image of him throwing an iMac through Alan Dye’s window.
You’re probably right. I’m still relishing the mental image of him throwing an iMac through Alan Dye’s window.
And to think I thought I was going crazy for years and years
I’ve experienced this many many times
I’ve experienced this many many times
Damn. The iMessage one hits home. Anytime I reset my hardware and reenable the settings I end up in limbo with continuity. Usually takes a few enable/disable enable/disables to get it working again (and even then it’s not guaranteed to last).
Now I’m angry at myself for turning a blind eye to it, cause the reality of handoff/continuity is riddled with issues where “it works when it works and doesn’t when it doesn’t”.
Given these features are huge reason for staying in ecosystem…. They really should fix all the bugs. Same thing with using my iPhone as a webcam. 3/4’s of the time I can’t get it to work with zero explanation why…. And it’s supremely annoying to discover since you usually only try it when you are prepping for something time sensitive.
^^ This.
I've been using a non-Apple peripheral that connects to a USB port for ages. OK, to be accurate, since I bought a 2015 iMac. It's worked perfectly every time. I'm actually on the third generation of the peripheral now.
Last summer, I upgraded from the iMac to a Mac Studio. The peripheral worked perfectly under all the versions of Ventura. Then, I got caught up with that magical upgrade that I didn't ask for or accede to (the one that so many people insist is imaginary...) for Sonoma.
From that point, the peripheral didn't work right, at least using the USB-A ports as I was using before. (I'll skip the details.) Connecting to a USB 4 port on the rear worked fine.
As it happens, I am good friends with the designer of the peripheral. I told him what happened. He told me that another guy had told him the same thing. So, he contacted the actual Apple engineers he'd worked with in designing the device.
Guess what!
They were shocked and never even heard of the problem.
My interpretation is that Apple management is so focused on the new stuff that they carefully filter out everything going to the engineers. There's layers of people deciding what to work on and what to put aside. There's no glory in fixing things, only in making new stuff. You don't get a bigger bonus by fixing something that shouldn't have gotten past the test phase.
More than one book has been written by former Apple employees who describe the culture there with management. I don't mean Tim Cook level management - the layers beneath him. The general impression I get is that their goals may not always align with users' goals. But, I could well be wrong about that. It's clearly working for Apple the way things are and working for those managers. In one sense, that's validation for what they're doing. Doesn't help us, though.
The hard part is that these problems continue with each generation of macOS unless they're fixed. At some point, they've invested so much in not fixing the issue that it may attract the wrong kind of attention to make it right. Oops.
Yeah, currently I have a stereo mini coming out of the Mac headphone jack to a Y-split quarter inch TRS feeding into line inputs on the Mackie.
Blend this bug with Apples "Spacial Audio" which if you turn your head you hear things out of your left ear, if it messes up, which it has for my AirPods Max it becomes really frustrating trying to figure out what happened when it "supposed to work that way" but then gets stuck.
The tool Balance Lock mentioned above has been installed since I purchased my AirPods Max in 2021. Happens all the time, as Apple appears to be using all sorts of Audio tricks to receive an individual audio stream from every app, and do a mix.
Worse is when you launch a security camera from the Home App, the audio gets messed all up, as HomeKit assumes you want to open your microphone, even though you wish you had the ability to restrict this access to HomeKit. Why would the intercom feature be turned on by default, where is my option to turn it off.
Bro, even if it was near the bottom of the list of bugs to fix, 12 years is still too long for it to exist.
please tell us more. Did you research if other users have this? Have you been in touch with Apple?Maybe it’s related to the bug in iOS 17 where the volume goes to 100% and no matter what I adjust, Siri, Voiceover, text and ringtones blast away forcing me to reboot nearly daily.
📣📱
Whelp...owe my wife an apology. Several years ago, there were a few times I let her use my 2014 MBP. Around the same time, I noticed a volume imbalance a couple times and got a little annoyed with her, thinking she was messing with settings. She swore up & down she didn't even open System Settings; I was like "sure...the Sound Setting Elves changed it."
FWIW, I haven't noticed such a thing since getting my M1Pro MBP at the end of 2021.
FWIW, I haven't noticed such a thing since getting my M1Pro MBP at the end of 2021.