Apple Music audio dropouts / stuttering on dual Studio Displays (macOS 26, lossless enabled)

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Apple Music audio dropouts / stuttering on dual Studio Displays (macOS 26, lossless enabled)

Since upgrading to macOS 26, I’ve been noticing intermittent playback issues with Apple Music. Tracks will sometimes stop abruptly or cut out for a second or two—almost like an old CD skip—but then resume or jump to the next track.

Here’s my setup and what I’ve tried so far:

Hardware: Dual Apple Studio Displays, with audio merged into a single output device using Audio MIDI Setup.
Audio settings: Apple Music lossless playback enabled.
Network: Strong and stable connection (tested via ping and streaming video), but I’m using Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1) instead of my ISP’s.

Troubleshooting so far:

Upgraded to a new router to rule out network throughput issues.
Completely reinstalled macOS 26 (clean install).

This behaviour started only after the macOS 26 update. The timing makes me wonder if there’s a change in how macOS handles multi-output audio or network buffering for lossless streams.

This issue may go beyond just Apple Music and I think may be affecting MS Teams and my connection is general.

Mac mini (M4)

Posted on Oct 5, 2025 11:58 AM

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Answer 1

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Ry- Author

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4 points

Oct 5, 2025 3:12 PM in response to Ry-

After some troubleshooting I discovered that Apple Music streams use IPv6 with the QUIC/HTTP-3 protocol, and when macOS constantly re-evaluates or switches between IPv4 and IPv6 routes, it momentarily interrupts the audio buffer. The result sounds like a CD skip. Disabling IPv6, either by setting macOS to Link-local only or turning it off on the router, forces the stream to stay on IPv4 and eliminates or at least reduces the skips.

I went into settings > network > details… > tcp/ip and set ipv6 to local-link only.

There is still some rare skipping but it seems to be caused by something else. I sent a text on messages and Apple Music skipped, maybe an issue related to the sent sound file being played?

I will continue to test and see if anything works, but it seems like more than one issue that may be out of my control.

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