Stop the popping in (High) Sierra

makthrow said:

followed all instructoins but still got a pop . i'm on el capitan 10.11.6

Click to expand...

RV.UZ said:

try again, this solution works on El Capitan too

Click to expand...

mattsday said:

Hi all, since upgrading to Sierra I've had the dreaded audio pop problem. Every 30 seconds or so the audio would make a loud pop before playing anything.

The fix used to be 'Antipop' but its developer has stopped maintaining it. This small fix here does the same thing but is verified working in Sierra.

Update: Confirmed working in High Sierra. You may need to re-load the service, see below in Misc on how to do this.

1. Open Terminal (in Utilities) and type:
sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mattsday.antipop.plist

You may get asked for your password at this step. Type it in

2. Copy all of this text:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.mattsday.antipop</string>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<false/>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/bin/bash</string>
<string>-c</string>
<string>while true; do say ' '; sleep 25; done</string>
</array>
</dict>
</plist>

3. Click Edit on the menu bar and then Paste (or press cmd+v)

4. Press ctrl-o and then <enter> to save (writeout) the file and then press ctrl-x to exit

5. Type this to load the service:
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mattsday.antipop.plist

You may get a single pop, but from now on it should be gone for good - even after reboots!

Misc
1. Why does the popping happen? How does this fix it?
With certain system definitions, OS X will power down the amplifier on your speaker. You may hear sound still but very quietly. On a real Mac this doesn't matter as the speakers are in-built (iMac, MacBook etc). On your Hackintosh it'll manifest itself as a nasty pop.

This fix simply tricks OS X in to thinking the audio driver is in use by using the say console command to say a blank space (' '). This stops it putting it to sleep, which in turn stops the popping!

2. I still get popping
In the script, change this line:
<string>while true; do say ' '; sleep 25; done</string>
to this:
<string>while true; do say ' '; sleep 10; done</string>
This will reduce the interval to 10 seconds (instead of 25)

Once that's done, unload and reload it:
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mattsday.antipop.plist
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mattsday.antipop.plist

3. I just upgraded and it's come back!
You just need to re-load the service:
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mattsday.antipop.plist

4. I don't trust you, I think this does bad things, this broke my system!
It's very unlikely. You can remove it by doing this in terminal:
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mattsday.antipop.plist
sudo rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mattsday.antipop.plist

Click to expand...

kristof46 said:

After this fix I still have a pop sound. Even more frequent than before. Can we decrease sleep from 25 to 1?

Click to expand...