Apple Studio Display has "Choppy Audio" from the display speakers

I had the same issue. I ended up updating the OS. After restart and installation, there is a separate firmware update available for the display. I read on another forum that you need to wait for the restart countdown to end, as opposed to clicking "restart now" in order for it to work correctly. The firmware update seemed to have fixed the problem for me. No more choppy audio, thank god. Still don't really understand how it can work fine for the first few weeks and then suddenly stop, all while running on the same firmware. Whatever. We paid too much money for these types of glitches to be happening

I have the same problem - choppy audio from iTunes and MSFT Teams. Was only Studio Display, Bluetooth headphones were fine. I unplugged the display for 15+ minutes and that solved the problem. @apple - sounds like a memory leak - please help!

My experience would indicate it's a Display issue, and not a computer issue.

When this occurred for me, restarting computer did not fix the issue. Even through 2 restarts, sound was still choppy.

When I routed the computer sound to my Sonos external speakers instead of the Studio Display, the sound was normal.

Reverting back to Studio Display, sound was choppy.

The only fix was powering off the Display and leaving it off for several minutes before powering on.

Interestingly, it has never re-occurred for me to date...

Have you tried to unplug the Studio Display from the electricity for a couple minutes? This is what I did to resolve the issue. It seems that the software in the Studio Display sometimes needs to be restarted, and the only way to do that is to unplug it from the electrical supply before switching it back on. Remember that you cannot just restart or unplug your Mac Studio: that only restarts the Mac not the Display.

FWIW:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/08/02/apple-confirms-studio-display-speaker-fault-offers-workaround

Thanks for your reply. I actually did unplug the display from everything, and that did not fix the issue. But based on your response, I left it unplugged for longer (about an hour) and now everything works just fine. Thanks!

I just unplugged my display from power and also disconnect the thunderbolt cable that was connected to the M1 Mac mini. I waited for a little over 15 min. So far so good. It looks like that corrected the problem with the audio. Hopefully Apple will fix this issue with a future firmware update.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Thanks everyone for this exchange. Unplugging from power for 15 minutes fixed the issue. I had the same issue everyone here described. Choppy audio. It just started happening today and was progressively getting worse. Fixed now. Hopefully stays fixed.

The display has a computer in it.

that computer gets in a wonky state, and then you get the symptoms you and other users are describing.

The solution is to disconnect the display and power off for a quarter hour.

Then reconnect and use as if nothing had ever happened.

This started happening to me to. Spent 1.5hrs on the phone to an Apple tech, reinstalled Monterey on their advice, still choppy audio. Studio display has exactly the same choppy audio when connected to MacBook Pro. Unplugged the power cable for 30secs and issue is now fixed.

Apple obviously this should be a known issue. Please let your tech staff know and find a more permanent fix.

Exact same problem happened to me 30 minutes ago. Sound played from a YouTube video for a few seconds then went off.

I went into System Preferences > Sound and toggled between the internal Mac Studio speakers (which worked) and then back to the Studio Display speakers: again, sound played for a few seconds then cut off.

Like several people, I unplugged the Studio Display from the mains electric for about a minute, and then plugged it back in: sound now works fine.

Nasty bug. I agree with others that it would be helpful to have a 'restart monitor' option in System Preferences. I guess the Studio Display is basically an iPad that never gets restarted if you just sleep your system each night.