RDM crashing over and over since macOS 27 upgrade

Hello

I'm sorry for the inconvenience. This is not a known issue.

You're right that this is related to audio redirection, specifically redirecting the sound output from the RDP server to your local machine (rather than redirecting microphone input to the RDP server). It's crashing trying to initialize the audio stack, but the direct cause is not clear to me. it's almost certainly a bug in FreeRDP but it might be hard to figure out what that bug actually is without a reproduction on my side. There could be a race condition where the audio device is queried too quickly after creation. We'd also need to know why this is occurring on your machine specifically, but it doesn't seem to be a general issue (I've seen no other reports).

I will work on investigating that, but in the meantime (and I really hate to suggest this), I'd like to rule out something corrupting the audio state on the local machine. Can you please try rebooting your machine and tell me if the issue persists?

If it does persist, let me know; the workaround until we can determine the cause will be to disable audio redirection from the server (Local Resources > Remote computer sound > Remote audio > "Leave on the remote computer"). If you've many servers let me know as the best way would be to change the default value or to do a batch edit on your sessions.

Please, tell me if you have some questions or something is not clear

Kind regards,

Keeping the chain updated here, changing the audio on my RDP template to remain on remote computer seems to have helped - no crash in past few days.

Hello

That's definitely a workaround, but not very ergonomic if you want to redirect audio. As I wrote, I'm interested if the issue persists after a reboot; I understand that's not very ergonomic so please let me know as your time and situation allows. If it does persist I'd be interested to know if you have any additional audio hardware connected to your machine but I'm assuming otherwise it's just a vanilla MacBook / MacBook Pro?

Thanks and kind regards,

I have rebooted several times throughout this process. The only audio physically connected to my macStudio via USB is the Creative sound bar, then the smattering of Bluetooth devices on my apple account (airpods, homepods etc.)

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,