BGM v0.4.3 on macOS 26.4.1 (Tahoe): severe audio choppiness, possibly addressed by open PR #852

[gmarmat]

BGM v0.4.3 produces severely choppy / unusable audio output on macOS 26.4.1 (Tahoe). Looks like this is what PR #852 ("Tahoe compat", open since 2026-04-12) might address. Filing partly as a public reproduction of the symptoms and partly to ask about that PR's status.

Setup

• MacBook Pro M4 (Mac16,1), macOS 26.4.1
• BGM v0.4.3 installed via the official .pkg from the GitHub releases page
• BGM set as Default Output device, with Output Device → LG ULTRAGEAR+ selected in the BGM menubar

What I see

• Audio through any app routed via BGM (Spotify, browser, Music.app) is choppy / garbled enough to be unusable
• Switching the Mac's output device away from BGM (directly to LG ULTRAGEAR+ over DisplayPort, or to a USB audio interface) immediately gives clean audio, so the downstream audio path itself is fine
• The "Background Music" and "Background Music (UI Sounds)" virtual devices both register correctly in CoreAudio (visible in Audio MIDI Setup), so the driver loads — it just doesn't produce usable output

PR #852

Noticed the open "Tahoe compat" PR (#852, opened 2026-04-12, empty description, no reviews, marked mergeable). If @GloryWord or a maintainer can confirm the intended scope, I'm happy to build from that branch on this hardware (MBP M4 / macOS 26.4.1) and post a real test report. That should give the PR enough validation signal to move forward.

Ask

• Is PR Tahoe compat #852 the right path for this, or is there a different in-flight fix?
• If Tahoe compat #852 is the path, what's blocking review — code or testing?

[kyleneideck]

I don't remember seeing anything in #852 that would affect the audio processing.

Do you get distorted sound when you set your built-in speakers as your output device in Background Music? If it's only when you're using the LG ULTRAGEAR+ displayport device, my first guess would be that device might have more than 2 channels (stereo), which Background Music still doesn't support, unfortunately. You can check in Audio MIDI Setup.app.

[gmarmat]

You're right, that's the cause. system_profiler SPAudioDataType reports the LG as an 8-channel output device:

LG ULTRAGEAR+         Output Channels: 8
MacBook Pro Speakers  Output Channels: 2
Elgato Wave XLR       Output Channels: 2

So this isn't a Tahoe regression, it's the existing >2-channel limitation hitting an 8-channel DisplayPort device. That also fits with #852 not touching audio processing.

Fine to close this as a known limitation rather than a macOS 26 bug. If multichannel output ever lands on the roadmap I'm happy to test on this hardware (MBP M4 / 8ch LG), but that's separate from #852.

Thanks for the quick pointer.