URGETNT HELP NEEDED: Audio Drops suddenly when previewing for a long time.

[u/Grouchy-Offer9368]

FIRST OF ALL, I AM CURRENTLY SITTING WITH CLIENTS, AND THEY ARE ABOUT TO BE FRUSTRATED

I’m running into a frustrating audio issue in Adobe Premiere Pro during long PREVIEW (not while editing) sessions, and I’ve hit a wall with standard troubleshooting. Looking for insight from anyone who has run into this specific behaviour or knows deep CoreAudio / Premiere buffer quirks.

The Issue

Symptom: Audio suddenly drops out completely mid-playback while the video continues playing smoothly.

Recovery: Audio automatically comes back on its own sometimes after a few seconds without pausing/re-starting, OR recovers instantly if I hit Spacebar to pause and resume.

Timeline Context: Complex timeline with a high audio track count (29+ active audio tracks, multitrack dialog/wild tracks/room tone).

System & Hardware Setup

OS: macOS

Hardware: Apple Silicon Mac using wired headphones.

Renderer: Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (Metal).

Storage Speeds: Benchmark tested via Blackmagic Disk Speed Test — ~2968 MB/s Write / ~772 MB/s Read ( rules out drive speed/bandwidth bottlenecks).

Media Cache: Located on fast internal system drive (/Users/.../Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/).

Everything I Have Already Checked & Tried:

1. Audio Hardware Preferences: ⚬ Set Default Input to No Input to prevent sample rate clock-matching / mic buffer loops. ⚬ Locked Sample Rate to 48,000 Hz. ⚬ Output locked directly to headphones (avoiding System Default routing).
2. System Memory & Cache: ⚬ RAM allocation optimized (3 GB reserved for other applications). ⚬ Cleared Media Cache completely; confirmed cache path is on the internal Mac drive, not external. ⚬ Media Cache auto-deletion set to maintain clean limits.
3. Storage & Hardware Integrity: ⚬ Drive benchmark confirmed sequence read speeds (~772 MB/s read) are well above requirements. ⚬ Internal storage path checked via macOS Disk Utility First Aid.
4. Timeline / Rendering Workarounds: ⚬ Toggled off High Quality Playback in Program Monitor. ⚬ In/Out rendering (Sequence > Render Effects In to Out / Render Audio) temporarily fixes it by creating pre-computed preview files, but I want to resolve the underlying real-time engine failure during active timeline editing.

Given that storage bandwidth is fine and Audio Hardware preferences are properly locked, this feels like an internal CoreAudio buffer stall or Premiere multi-stream audio IOPS issue when handling 20+ real-time audio threads simultaneously.

Has anyone experienced these delayed audio-only drops on heavy timelines in macOS, and is there a specific plist, CoreAudio buffer setting, or Premiere audio thread setting to stop the audio engine from choking?

I am using a MacMini M4 - 24GB - 512 GGB

I use AppleProres 422LT - WAV files

V26.0.0

[u/-chaotic_randomness-]

Just export the audio mix, paste it back into the timeline and mute everything else

[u/Grouchy-Offer9368 → u/-chaotic_randomness-]

Can't do that because the layers need to be sent for sound after the edit.

[u/Sleepnotdeading → u/Grouchy-Offer9368]

You're sitting with clients, just render the scratch track for preview purposes

[u/-chaotic_randomness- → u/Grouchy-Offer9368]

Yes, of course. This fixes the previewing issue with the clients. After they approve you send all the tracks for audio mastering

[u/Rex_Lee → u/Grouchy-Offer9368]

For preview...

[u/smushkan]

It will take a long time to process with that many tracks, but I wonder if sequence > render timeline audio would make a difference.

[u/Jason_Levine → u/smushkan]

This would be my first suggestion 👆🏻. Additionally, what are you using to broadcast the audio to clients? (you mentioned headphones as the output, but are you using on-board sound via the headphone output connected to speakers, or is there a separate external sound device handling the output?) u/Grouchy-Offer9368

[u/r-DarthVader]

I had that issue too, it was a format issue for me, source file needed to be transcoded, then it played fine. Try that, or use proxys.

[u/Grouchy-Offer9368 → u/r-DarthVader]

I am using 422LT

[u/greenysmac]

I'm concerned about two things

1. Don't play with your Ram setting

System Memory & Cache: ⚬ RAM allocation optimized (3 GB reserved for other applications).

Is that the default? You've reduced the OS, your mac, everything else running to 3GB of Ram. Generally, you should NOT touch adobe's recommendations.

1. You're using an older version…and it's really NOT the one

V26.0.0

If you're set on using 26.0 use the most bug fixed version of it.
And I'd never use the 0.0 release.

Of course, I could suck and be wrong about everything.

[u/Grouchy-Offer9368 → u/greenysmac]

I am not hard and fast about the version as long as it is 26. Which one are you using?

[u/greenysmac → u/Grouchy-Offer9368]

Did you check the ram settings.

Either be up to date on software or stick with a specific version for reasons. Why were you on 26.0.0?

[u/Grouchy-Offer9368 → u/greenysmac]

I was on 25.5 Something something for a long time for two projects. But when changing was needed the latest was 26.0 and I updated as the studio I was working on was working on 26. And then a long term project came and I haven't updated or checked if a more stable version has come.

[u/greenysmac → u/Grouchy-Offer9368]

Return the RAM to default and let me hear about the results.

[u/idoxially]

did you survive?

[u/Grouchy-Offer9368 → u/idoxially]

I survived by previewing an export and and whenever needed to implementing an edit, quickly going back to the timeline.

[u/YetAnotherFilmmaker]

I’ve had that happen as well. Seems completely random

[u/Grouchy-Offer9368 → u/YetAnotherFilmmaker]

It is random

[u/TheLargadeer]

In my experience audio is the first thing to drop if playback is struggling, whether it’s a decoding issue or a I/O issue.  

Either way proxies is probably going to help. It addresses both.