MacBook – Choppy audio playback on Chrome

audiogoogle-chromemacbook pro

I just got a Macbook air, and I am noticing that audio playback on Chrome is noticeably choppy (e.g. when watching a Youtube video).

Audio playback is great on iTunes and Safari, but not in Chrome. Any ideas on how to fix it?

Best Answer

I know this was from a while ago, but I had a similar issue and stumbled across this temporary fix. By default, Chrome launches with the wrong audio buffer rate. You can manually set it to the right one by launching Chrome through terminal, but that's a pain in the butt to do every time. So you can create a shortcut with automater to do it for you:

  1. Open Automater
  2. Choose "Application"
  3. Search for "Run Shell Script"
  4. Drag the "Run Shell Script" action into the place to the left
  5. Paste the following into the Run Shell Script text box:

open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app --args --audio-buffer-size=2048

Then just save that application, quit chrome, and open it to start chrome with the right buffer.

NOTE: I've noticed that this only works for a while. If you, for example, close your laptop and open it back up, the audio may not work correctly again. No idea why.

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