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Just received the laptop yesterday, and it arrived in an ice cold state via UPS (I am in a moderate climate but we had a cold front this week with freeze warnings). I am guessing delivery loaded it the night before and left it out in the freezing 29 degree temps overnight. But I let it warm to room temp and put it on the charger for awhile before firing it up. The battery history showed it had dipped from the 100% charged at the factory down to 57% for the less than one day that it travelled in shipping. I was not overly alarmed by this until I checked the sound. At modest sound levels the entire midrange is blown out, which range I was able to narrow down with the Music app's equalizer. Probably it was the cold exposure but it could have been otherwise mishandled.
To verify that it was not operator error despite my ownership of a crazy number of Macs going back to 1989, I googled this speaker crackling and distortion issue on MacBook Pros. Well, apparently this is a frequent issue and I learned three things:
1. Well, number 1 I already knew, you really have to break in any speaker at midlevel volume for a day or two before blasting to warm up the speaker and avoid damage, it still should not be a distorted crackling mess though at medium volume, but I did let it play music for several hours to warm up the speakers hoping for improvement.
2. MacBook speakers are very fragile, so even if you have great sound, you could lose it in the future if you are not very careful in handling the laptop to avoid bumping the laptop around, even in a case. The speakers tear easily and there are YouTube videos on how to glue them back together if your Mac is no longer under warranty.
And 3. The MacBook Pro M3 Pro with 11 cores has actually LESS PERFORMANCE CORES than the M2 and M1 versions that only have 10 total cores. Because Apple increased the EFFICIENCY CORES not the performance cores in these lower end M3 Pro models. So an M1 Pro with 10 cores has 8 performance cores and two efficiency, the M2 Pro with 10 cores has 6 performance cores with 4 efficiency, and the M3 Pro 11 core has ONLY 5 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores. Also the M3's music volume is measurably lower than in the M2 according to YouTubers. Generally this is fine, but it is NOT FINE FOR MUSIC MAKING when combining tracks, even when using Apple's DAW for mixing tracks because most utilize performance cores not efficiency cores. I am not making complex music though, just listening to Adell on Apple Music, and it sounds terrible. So I will attempt to swap out this Mac but if it is similarly tossed around at delivery or in the Amazon Warehouse, or left out in the cold overnight, this could happen again. BUMMER and a waste!
Aside from the painful sounds, there were two operating issues also: I can't "SHARE" to email or messages in Safari, those options are blanked out in System Settings, which is a glitch I hope. And Apple's "Stocks" app crashed running in the background, even though no third party apps were also running, or even loaded up yet. Still this is an amazing laptop that is a vast improvement in power and speed over both of my M1's - iMac (16gb) and iPad Air 5th gen. But I recommend skipping any "Pro" version that is less than 18gb RAM or 512gb SSD. Why bother? Just get a MacBook Air M2! The Space Black color of the M3 Pro is a welcome change from the silver versions I've been staring at for 2 decades, but I wish Midnight (dark blue) was an option on these.
I also recommend the Apple HomePod Minis, which are not bluetooth so you can't easily use them with just anything, but they connect via Airplay to Macs and also to Amazon Music's App, which is not available on the laptop OS but is an iOS app. I haven't tested whether you can run airplay through Amazon Music on a web browser. Just one of these tiny speakers sounds far and away better than the laptop speakers combined, and also better than Alexa device offerings for home speakers. Another thing I recommend is to use the Apple Music app's equalizer settings and adjust them for each song. Most songs sound great in "Lounge" or "R&B" as a starting point, and the music will be both louder and cleaner on your MacBook. The app's separate settings menu also allows you to add sound enhancement generally that greatly improves quality and volume.
