Boot Camp, Windows driver issue may be damaging new MacBook Pro speakers
Some reports are circulating that Boot Camp users with heavy audio use in Windows 10 are experiencing random, loud pops, and seeing distorted audio after a period of use that can persist when the computer is rebooted into macOS.
Some users are experiencing a periodic loud pop out of proportion with the volume settings while booted into Windows. The behavior does not manifest in Parallels or other virtual machines. Additionally, users of only macOS on the new MacBook Pro are completely unaffected.
The loud pops appear to be manifested by what appears to be an out-of-date Windows audio driver in Boot Camp. Over time, users report that the pops are physically damaging the speakers.
Users seeing the damage are reporting across the board volume imbalances between speakers, and others report distortion when the volume of the audio in any OS above around 50%.
The problem does not appear to be related to a particular model of the new MacBook Pro family, with scattered reports surfacing from users of all configurations.
AppleInsider has contacted Apple about the situation, and was told to have users manifesting the problem contact Apple Care phone support to document the problem, and to make a Genius Bar appointment for assessment and evaluation.
Some users experiencing the problem have solved it through installation of the Realtek HD Audio Driver version 6.0.1.7989 released on Nov. 15. The updated non-Apple-approved driver appears to rectify the popping issue.
Some users are experiencing a periodic loud pop out of proportion with the volume settings while booted into Windows. The behavior does not manifest in Parallels or other virtual machines. Additionally, users of only macOS on the new MacBook Pro are completely unaffected.
The loud pops appear to be manifested by what appears to be an out-of-date Windows audio driver in Boot Camp. Over time, users report that the pops are physically damaging the speakers.
Users seeing the damage are reporting across the board volume imbalances between speakers, and others report distortion when the volume of the audio in any OS above around 50%.
The problem does not appear to be related to a particular model of the new MacBook Pro family, with scattered reports surfacing from users of all configurations.
AppleInsider has contacted Apple about the situation, and was told to have users manifesting the problem contact Apple Care phone support to document the problem, and to make a Genius Bar appointment for assessment and evaluation.
Amelioration of the problem
AppleInsider suggests that users who must use Windows with Boot Camp plug in a pair of headphones or speakers into the headphone jack on the computer while inside Windows. This completely bypasses Apple's speakers, preventing damage.Some users experiencing the problem have solved it through installation of the Realtek HD Audio Driver version 6.0.1.7989 released on Nov. 15. The updated non-Apple-approved driver appears to rectify the popping issue.
Comments
*Waits for all the dislikes*
My one attempt to use Bootcamp on a MacBook Pro was thwarted by bad trackpad drivers. That was on Apple because it's their custom trackpad. The audio chipset might be standard PC hardware but it's still up to Apple to make sure the drivers work correctly with their hardware.
Not a very common word, by far. I don't know what it means, and I'm an adult.
It's a lot like the problem with Linux users. They cry about lack of support from hardware vendors, and then when a hardware vendor decides to release something that works with their OS (eg Realtek drivers) they complain why the manufacturer didn't release the source code instead. The Manufacturer is then blamed for not adhering to whatever rubbish be it power management or fancy feature buttons that the Linux user expects instead of oh... maybe just running the damn OS the machine came with.
If you run Windows on a Mac Laptop, expect to have problems. Apple can not, and does not engineer their hardware to run Windows, it's engineered to run MacOS. If you can run Windows on it, fine, but you're going to lose power management and various other driver-specific tweaks that Apple made to the Apple driver on MacOS that don't exist in the generic driver Apple signed for use in Windows. Just be happy you can boot Windows at all.
Your ignorance is not the editors' problem.
(I knew what it meant, though.)
Apple creates the drivers for their proprietary things like the trackpad, backlighting buttons, etc. Everything else is nothing different than if you were installing Windows on a PC. If Apple uses a Realtek Audio chip, then you go get it from there if Microsoft doesn't have one built-in.
I agree....this is something Apple doesn't have to do. Especially now days when you can use something like Parallels or VMWare that will basically do everything you want and you can run both side by side...even with 16GB of RAM.
The base install of windows 10 almost always installs the wrong driver for something that will cause some crash, serious issues.
Thing like driver signing that they didn't really announced, deactivated 3 drivers on my desktop when installing the anniversary edition and had to remove driver signing to actually make it work OK since OEM are not going to pay MS money on their razor thin margins to certify 3+ year old drivers on hardware they're not using anymore.
Also, a word being adult or not has little to do with this.
How often do you use the Word 'utilize' instead of 'use'.
From ' Usage and Abusage '
'utilize is, 99 times out of 100, much inferior to use; the other one time it is merely inferior.'
I would agree with that but each to their own.