Snow Leopard performance slow...

What is "SMC repair"?
Thank you,
Francisco

I had the slowdown issue and just deleted the file /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist as instructed and now my Mac is back to blazing speeds.
UNBELIEVABLE!
Many thanks!

My opinion about the performance was deleted, maybe that tells a lot...

With regards to disabling coreaudio by deleting /system/library/launchdaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist I would be careful removing or deleting things from your LaunchDaemon folder as from my experience they do not seem to get automatically recreated. Dragging and dropping them to the desktop and putting them back works but you need to repair the permissions after you put it back otherwise it does not load.

I found these commands to work much better as they simple disable it without having to delete or recreate the files and have all the permissions issues.

To check and see if coreaudiod is actually running:
sudo launchctl list |grep com.apple.audio.coreaudiod
If nothing is returned then it is not running

To load or unload coreaudiod temporarily:
sudo launchctl load /system/library/launchdaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist
sudo launchctl unload /system/library/launchdaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist

To load/unload and have this persist even when rebooted:
sudo launchctl unload -w /system/library/launchdaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /system/library/launchdaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist

I did some extensive speed testing and noticed a huge increase in speed when disabling coreaudio. Spotlight does not lag and mail.app opens instantly. The only issue with disabling coreaudio is that now my system sounds such as empty the trash do not show up. Also it now seems to have problems using the internal speakers if I have my USB headset plugged in. If I start Safari with the headset plugged in all sound will come out of that. The only way to make it use the internal speakers is to start Safari with the USB headset unplugged. Trying to set the sound preferences in System Preferences to default to the internal speakers does not work as it just keeps reverting after I leave and return to the exit pane.

I also found out that Snow Leopard boots in 32bit by default so I tried restarting it by holding down the 6 and 4 key on boot and forced it into 64bit. This seems to be faster but enabling coreaudio causes it to slow down again.

So right now I have my system to default to 64bit on boot with coreaudio disabled and it is running faster than the old Leopard install.

I've tried to locate the /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist file, and no luck. My LaunchDaemons folder is empty, and I've not done anything to this system at all, other that install the updates, as SL came preinstalled on my MacBook Pro.

My 2 GHz iMac with just 1 GB RAM was fine (for my needs) with SL and 10.6.1; my speed problems only commenced with 10.6.2. All seems fine except for Microsoft applications. After much work (zapping PRAM, resetting SMC and cleaning fonts (also fixing permissions and running SUDO commands as I usually do)), MS apps seem to open at the their former speed, but take ages to quit. The quit command closes the window of whatever app I am running, but then the AppleScript logo shows up in place of the MS app logo, and holds everything up. I have watched the Activity Monitor during this process and after quitting the app, it takes up 100% of system resources for 3-5 seconds. Quitting these apps used to be, or at least seem to be, instant under 10.6.1. I am hopeful that a 10.6.3 will help these issues.

I'm no expert, but here are some important things that nobody has mentioned:
• /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist is NOT a core audio preference file. It is a launchd config file - a file that instructs the OS about launching processes that it needs to perform various functions.
• if you delete the coreaudiod launchd config file, or disable core audio some other way, anything that needs it will not work. Many have identified that they lose system sounds. Well, if system sounds need core audio, and core audio is disabled, you'll have no system sounds. Without a doubt, there are other things that also will not work.
• messing around in your System directory is a good way to muck up your computer.

That being said, while this performance problem has a clear connection to core audio, many (most?) people do not have it. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the problem is an interaction between core audio and something else, rather than core audio just not working.

Accordingly, it might be fruitful to explore what third party audio/multimedia stuff (i.e. devices/applications/plugins) are installed or running processes on the computers that are having these problems. It may also be useful to explore whether there may be an issue with a prefs file for something that uses core audio.

I repaired my disk (which had no error) resetted the the System Management Controller (SMC) and the RAM (PRAM).... I also upgraded to 8 gig of RAM.. made a new clean install of Snow Leopard....

Still, I've got the same problem even if I don't install third party softwares.... what a joke >_>

Back in December, I upgraded my hard drive from the stock 160GB model to a "fast" 7200rpm 500GB ST9500420ASG model. After a successful cloning and verification of key functionality, I heard that Snow Leopard was to be another helpful performance improvement measure, and was also "skinnier" on the Hard Drive.

Well, the upgrade was rather smooth, but, I have been suffering from very quick battery run down (within 1.5hrs - even though the new drive is to be more energy efficient than the old one), increasingly long response times, and the recurring visit of the mesmerizing pinwheel.

I did toss the com.audio.coreaudiod.plist in the trash and restarted the system, as suggested by Guttiwuts. Initially, the Finder seemed to react faster, but, the Speech feature (which was hiccupping for me earlier) was still skipping and very slow. Additionally, MS Entourage, Firefox, and even Mail continued to run slow, as before. I am maxed out on RAM, have a new battery and the most recent updates on all my software, so, I am a bit perplexed by all this.

Given all the effort and expense in trying to get my machine to perform better, given that I was running out of space on my original drive, I seem to be only marginally better off in that I have more space on my machine, but the performance is now even worse than it was before installing Snow Leopard. ...I am sorry to say, but, these problems are reminiscent of my recent memory of using a Windows XP machine - not good. Hmm...

Any suggestions?

I have the exact same issue....but I am on a Macbook. Everything is slower, expose, internet, using Mail and iPhoto. It's very frustrating! Makes me think I shouldn't have upgraded to Sno Leopard!

I thought the new macs would be faster and use up more processor speed for the work you would be doing, but it doesnt. I am a 3D artist and MAN this ****** me off... I thought a mac with 2.93Ghz 8GB of DDR3 would be shooting through the roof... **** no. Im trying to figure out if there is any way to transfer processor speed to the 3D apps I need. Some are 32 bit for now, BUT MAN this is agitating and frustrating. I feel lied to by apple and I have been a Apple user for 1 years now. Cant stand PCs. So I feel ya Jason, but is there anyone out there that has a way to up the speed to get the programs working faster??? MAC PERSONNEL??

I've been having the same problem. I tried the coreaudio thing and that didn't seem to help at all.

The other suggestion was to try and create a new user. Well, guess what? That seems to have worked very well. My old user account would bounce Firefox about 20 times and even after that, it would be slow to paint the window. The new account bounces about 3 times and the window opens right after that.

I wish I knew what it was in that old account that is gumming things up. I really don't want to have to re configure the new account to match the old one. Argh!

I just disabled Spotlight from Entourage (which I do not use and is not set up with any accounts.)
Speedier performance already.
Just look in the entourage>preferences menu.

Good luck, hope this improvement continues......

Follow-up: I wiped everything and installed Snow Leopard on the clean disk. The difference in performance is startling. It's much faster than it ever has been - even before the slow downs from doing the SL upgrade. Something definitely went wrong with the first upgrade. I use Xcode for app development and it was supposed to work differently under SL. After the upgrade, I really didn't see any difference it in. After the fresh install and reinstall of Xcode, it does look different. Something didn't "take" with the upgrade.

When I was reinstalling applications after the clean SL install, I got upgraded, SL-specific versions of a few apps. I think what happened was that the SL upgrade went down on top of apps that had not been upgraded for SL and this caused some problems somewhere. With the clean install and re-install of apps, things went down in the right order. I know you're not supposed to have to worry about that but whatever. I'm really happy now. It's like I just got a new machine and the fun is back!

The reinstall process was pretty painless. I had already put most of my files on an external disk so I didn't have to recover a lot of files. I have a Time Machine backup and I just used that to restore my Documents folder after the install. Worked fine. I chose to re-install all my Apps as opposed to recovering them as explained above. Just have to make sure you have all your Activation codes.

Good luck.

I spent a few further days looking at my problem. Discovered that with a few apps open (Mail, Safari, iCal, iTunes, iChat, iPhoto, Preview, Address Book) I'd have no free RAM. Things would be painful. Then open an Microsoft Office app (Word or Excel typically) and boom, intense moments of inactivity.

Things were a little more comfortable if I was disciplined and had only 2/3 apps open at a time with as few windows, etc. It reminded me of the darkest days of OS9, when I would religiously check all those extensions, control panels, etc. for conflicts to avoid the inevitable crash.

Things continued to be a little less painful if VirusBarrier X5 was not background scanning (just a weekly scan instead) and if Entourage was not doing something in the background (which was a waste of time as I do not use Entourage).

So, I spent £90 and bought 4GB RAM. Took 5min to upgrade. I haven't looked back since 2GB just doesn't seem to be enough with 10.6!

So, my suggestion for slow 10.6 is have minimum 4GB RAM on your machine.