Sonoma 14.2.1 Audio Input Issue

Hey folks,

If you use Apple’s Sonoma release on your Macs, you may have noticed an orange icon appear in your menu bar, when using any application that has access to the computer’s microphone interface.

Apple introduced this to allow the OS to detect background noise via a new function called Voice Isolation. If there is clear documentation on this, I could not find it.

I commonly use Logic Pro for my DAW needs, but when I was recording a sample (or trying to do so) for my main article, I saw odd behaviour in Logic’s input meters, and when I tried recording, there was pretty much nothing. I then tried doing a vocal recording, and it too failed.

So I followed Apple’s recommendations on the web, uninstalling and reinstalling Logic Pro, deleting preferences, booting Logic without plugins and all to no avail. I opened a ticket with Apple Support and they called me back as promised.

I went through my diagnostic process with the specialist and she said that I had followed the instructions and then asked for a remote connection. She immediately noted the presence of the small orange microphone icon in the menubar and asked me to click on it. It revealed two options, Standard and Voice Isolation with Voice Isolation selected.

I have no recollection of ever clicking the microphone icon but it was set to Voice Isolation. Changing the setting to Standard resolved the problem, and she suggested that she would provide feedback to improve awareness of this function and the potential issues as it is an operating system feature and not a Logic Pro feature. I am consistently impressed by the quality of the support direct from Apple, their commitment to timeliness and their expertise.

Oddly, this new function had no effect if I tried recording with GarageBand or Universal Audio’s very excellent LUNA DAW that runs only on macOS.

Thus if you are using a DAW application and are having input audio issues, check for the presence of this new function and ENSURE that it is set to Standard. It definitely impacts Logic Pro and prior to Sonoma 14.2.1 also impacted input audio with Zoom, although Zoom was not impacted on a broadcast that I did on Thursday past.

Hopefully this tip is helpful to other recordists. Thanks as always for reading. Please subscribe to the Articles and The Podcast. Please submit comments or send in your questions. Until next time, peace.