Hello
Thanks. I've opened a ticket to track this, but the cause is not clear.
The problem is in FreeRDPs audio path. When a remote session starts sending audio, FreeRDP creates an Apple AVAudioEngine and asks macOS for its output devices. macOS tries to build it's internal default audio configuration, which can include the USB sound bar, HomePods, other bluetooth devices, etc. The crash report shows macOS crashing inside that operation; in other words, FreeRDP is triggering the problematic code path but the actual memory crash happens on Apple's CoreAudio implementation on macOS 27.
It's obviously not a general crash when using audio on your system, so why aren't other applications affected? It could definitely be a bug on the FreeRDP side, although nothing stands out. Other applications may be using a different audio API, not explicitly selected the current output device, not causing macOS to rebuild the default device combination in the same way, initializing when the device list is already stable, etc. It's really impossible for me to say.
If you'd like to help narrow the problem down, can you isolate the crash to a specific configuration?
Bluetooth disabled, USB sound bar connected
Bluetooth disabled, USB sound bar disconnected
Bluetooth enabled, USB sound bar connected, Airpods connected but not selected
Airpods connected and selected
A HomePod or airplay speaker selected
The Mac's built-in speakers selected, if available
Open Audio MIDI Setup.app (/System/Applications/Utilities/Audio MIDI Setup.app) and screenshot the audio devices. Particularly I'm interested if there are aggregate or multi output devices listed.
Please collect a device inventory with system_profiler SPAudioDataType -json > ~/Desktop/audio-devices.json and send it to me by PM.
Finally, it's possible you can collect some interesting logs from Core Audio itself. Run this command, then reproduce the crash. Stop it and send me the output around the failure by PM.
log stream --style compact --info --debug --predicate 'process == "coreaudiod" OR subsystem CONTAINS[c] "audio"'
Messages mentioning aggregate devices, Bluetooth, AirPlay, device removal, device changes, or sample-rate changes would be especially useful.
We want to narrow down: is this triggered by a specific device combination, a default output change, the FreeRDP initialization path itself, or something completely different.
Please, let me know if you have any questions or something isn't clear
Kind regards,
