"reload" mac audio drivers without rebooting

EDIT: most likely only works for osx before 10.13

This is what you need,

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext
sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext

But if you want to kill your coreaudio as well,

 ps aux | grep 'coreaudio[d]' | awk '{print $2}' | xargs sudo kill

use with caution.
The grep target is written this way specifically to exclude grepping the grep process itself in the ps out.

Try typing this into Terminal:

sudo killall coreaudiod

This will kill the coreaudio process and restart it.

Same solution but with different variation

sudo kill -9 `ps ax|grep 'coreaudio[a-z]' | awk '{print $1}'`

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