You could also designate another sound device (like headphones) if you wanted to output audio that way. You should see your HDMI device in the list of available sound outputs. If you have issues with your sound and you’re still running Mavericks, upgrading your Mac to a newer version of its operating system is a good idea. Fix Crackling or Garbled Sound By Killing Core AudioĬrackling or stuttering audio is a problem that plagued many around the launch of OS X 10.9 “Mavericks” in late 2013. Unfortunately, it’s pretty inconvenient, but it’s not the only way of fixing some issues. Restarting your machine will likely fix many issues, including crackling or stuttering audio. This seems like a bit of a heavy-handed fix, but sometimes you really do need to turn it off and on again. If you’ve tried adjusting your Sound settings to no avail, restarting your Mac is probably worth a shot. You might want to try resetting your NVRAM/PRAM to solve this issue, otherwise create a backup with Time Machine and then reinstall macOS and try again. If you don’t see any output devices at all, you might have encountered a problem when updating or upgrading macOS. Some sound issues can even be fixed by selecting a different output, then selecting the original output. If you would rather output to another device like an audio interface, headphones, or aggregate device, you can specify that under these settings. Now, test your output settings again by playing some music or an audio file.