A custom ROM could fix your Pixel audio issues
While Google hasn’t had much to say in regards to a fix for the recently-surfaced Pixel audio issues, the community at large seems to have found a temporary solution. If you’re willing to flash a custom ROM — or even a custom audio module on top of your stock ROM — you could eliminate the crackling sound that produces when playing certain audio at high volume.
To be specific, people found that installing the WETA ROM had completely solved their issues. It was later found that the ROM was using a modified version of the Viper Audio Mod as standard, so you could even flash this audio mod on your stock Pixel installation so long as you have an unlocked bootloader and a custom recovery like TWRP installed.
Even if you aren’t willing to flash a ROM in order to solve this issue, it’s good news: this means it’s likely software related, so whatever Google has to do to get it fixed won’t require annoying RMA processes. Of course, Google will have to fully investigate the issue and make sure they know with 100% certainty what’s causing the bug, so we still may be a fair bit of time off from seeing that happen. If you’re impatient then you can always try doing it yourself.
[via Reddit]