J_Dubbs wrote:
I don’t use the speakers often — basically discovered this by accident on a Zoom call while my headphones weren’t pairing. Any time prior to recently, I thought the speakers sounded great, however, I can’t confidently say if that was a year ago or 3 months ago.
My timeline is similar. I think I noticed the problem about 3 months ago (ish). I use my computer on a weekly zoom call to an out-of-town friend. He frequently has some sort of tech problem on his end, often audio. So I assumed that was the cause. But for some reason, I played some other sound on this computer and heard the same problem. The hard part was later confessing that the audio problem had been on my end and he was blameless.
I know correlation isn’t causation — but my OS was way out of date until recently. I updated the OS before having the battery replaced. Online I’ve found other cases where people had their battery replaced and then complained on buzzy sound, and people blaming a bug in the software.
I think I've had the battery replaced on this computer too, but it was years ago. This computer won't run anything more recent than Ventura. I don't know when the last time I updated was. There have been some Ventura updates, but there's no guarantee I applied them promptly. I usually don't.
I think part of my problem here is I always have viewed the Apple Genius team as knowledgeable and thorough, so to have the illusion crumble on the claim “because there’s no sound in Safe Mode, this means it must be a software issue.”
Such is life. Everyone's human and makes mistakes every now and then. When the topic is random system functionality in an obscure boot mode on a 8 year-old computer, such mistakes are even more likely. I wouldn't say that this error on the part of the Apple Genius team is an egregious one.
And they also acted like it could be a document or any file — I dunno, to me, that answer was lacking depth and I feel like it’s wrong of them to shove me into reformatting the machine.
I'm going to have to agree with them on this point. People will install all kinds of junk on their computers. That junk ware is very heavily advertised and said advertising is extremely effective. It's a little-known fact that the scam ware industry is a very significant part of the entire software industry. If I were working in the Genius Bar and someone came in with some odd problem, I would be shocked if they didn't have multiple different scam apps on their computer.
It's pretty standard procedure to wipe the computer and reinstall the operating system. That's a quick and easy procedure that immediately corrects at least 75% of all problems. Why wouldn't they do that? The sad part is that most users don't know any of this so, if they have a backup, they'll typically just restore the scam ware when they home.
There’s this side of accountability where I would really want Apple to acknowledge the bad advice and make this right — I really just want a proper assessment and I don’t feel like I got that.
You're in the wrong place for that. You would have to contact the management of the store. And this is a really, really obscure detail. You'll have a difficult time finding anyone to even understand what you're talking about. Most people don't have a computer that old to verify it either.
And even then, what's the likelihood that people are going to pay for any repairs to one of these old, wheezing Intel models? On the newer Apple Silicon computers, you really need that red "Safe Boot" indicator in the menu bar. Otherwise you can't tell you're running in Safe Mode. Even the sound works. 😄 But on that 2017, you can totally tell. It just crawls in Safe Mode. It crawls in normal mode too.
You do have a valid point, but it's just not a significant issue. Most importantly, if you were to let this issue deter you from purchasing a new Apple product, or from obtaining support directly from Apple in the future, then you will have only succeed in punishing yourself for someone else's understandable error.
edit: the thing that makes me think this is not a software issue is the speakers in my LG Ultrafine sound great through the Thunderbolt cable, and wired headphones sound fine too. If this were a software or driver issue, I would expect the problem to cascade into other wired audio output.
Not necessarily. The fact that audio doesn't work in Safe Mode proves that software is very much involved. The only way to tell for sure would be to install an older OS version like Monterey or Big Sur and see if the sound is still corrupted. I know I wouldn't bother to do that. But you can try adjusting the balance. Maybe your problem is identical to mine and just one side is blown out.
