CoreAudiod 90% cpu and hightemps

I can't believe that the answer to a widespread issue with an errant system process is to "simply" re-install our operating systems! Does the absurdity of this as a final answer not strike anyone else? Why doesn't Apple "simply" fix the coreaudiod process! I'm sorry, but this is just not a solution for me.At best it is a workaround. What will stop this from happening again amd us having to "simply" re-install the OS again and again. Until we address the root cause and how to prevent this, we are just closing our eyes and hoping the gun doesn't go off again ;-)

BTW- I'm not meaning to pick on you hermanml. I know your reply was sincere and intended to help others get around an ugly situation. My frustration is with "Apple" in general for not stepping up to address what has become a wide spread issue affecting very many users that has not, to my knowledge, been addressed with a sufficient explanation or fix.(I do continue to submit crash reports from both of my MACBooks to Apple). Please do not mistake this as an attempt to question your (hermanml) integrity or intent. Thank you for offering at least some soluton to this most frustrating bug (or whatever one chooses to call it). I can only hope that now that I have finally opened my big mouth and vented, the next link I find regarding this issue will require me to eat my words! At least then it would mean this is resolved ;-)

In Activity Monitor select the CoreAudiod process, click on the Quit icon in the toolbar then click on the Force Quit button.

What third-party audio software are you running?

What happens if you quit FireFox? What might you be running that would use CoreAudio? Any plug-ins like Flash, iWoW, Hear, etc.?

If you double-click on the process in Activity Monitor it will open a process window. Click on the Open Files and Ports and look through the list to see if you can identify what is running. You can also check the Console log for any relevant information.

If you have any cache cleaning software like Lion Cache Cleaner using it to clear system and user caches may help if the problem is due to corrupted cache.

Sorry, apparently that isn't available.

If there's no problem in a safe boot then that points to a preference file or cache file problem at a first glance. Something that has been corrupted most likely outside of the Home folder. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what it is. Safe mode disables third-party items such as drivers, preference panes, contextual menu items, certain plug-ins, etc. You could hunt for days trying to uncover the culprit.

If Lion Cache Cleaner doesn't help any then I would give a reinstall a try. It should take about 45 minutes or so:

Reinstalling Lion Without the Installer

Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alterhatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.

When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.

Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Continue button.

Note: You can also re-download the Lion installer by opening the App Store application. Hold down the OPTION key and click on the Purchases icon in the toolbar. You should now see an active Install button to the right of your Lion purchase entry. There are situations in which this will not work. For example, if you are already booted into the Lion you originally purchased with your Apple ID or if an instance of the Lion installer is located anywhere on your computer.

Sleep well, MacDuff. 🙂

I actually ran into the same problem. I have updated Lion on the computer, 10.7.1. coreaudiod was going already at 110%. I started iTunes at it went to zero - quit the itunes and coreaudiod is back at 100%. So I'm running iTunes and fixing the permissions atm 😉

My money is on one of the Firefox plug-ins, like java, or flash. This is what I am fooling around with at the moment. Both of those are consuming lots of CPU for no good reason.

Thnx,im experienced pc user,and i see after upgrading on 10.7.1. that my macbook became much slower,on activity monitor i see coreaudio jums over 70,non stop,i was thinking that i can put down priority level as on pc,im on trip so i dont have lion dvd,so this with itunes happened to be most suitable solution.

Thanks again,

Damir Stipetic

FOR PEOPLE STILL EXPERIENCING THE PROBLEM:

Simply reinstall your OS. In Lion, boot up while holding Cmd+R. In older versions, boot up with the Install DVD in your mac (one of the DVDS in your macs box). DO NOT format your drive, ONLY reinstall your OS.

I am currently having the same ******* problem.

My computer is experiencing either an itunes crash or coreaudiod running 115%

i have backed up most of my data, and will now reinstall mac os x lion by using command +R while restarting.

Hope it works.

and I agree to Phredb, Apple should fix this asap.

Also,i talked to apple technicians on technical support.

after 3 calls of 2 hours, the superwiser advised me that i should reinstall Lion.

something in the "messages beta" software seemed fishy.

anyways hope mine works

I had a similar problem with my Lion installation, coreaudio on plain deskto used to take 40+% and running youtube made it shoot to 120+% (that the reading i got from my activity monitor). And everything used to become really really slow.

I instrumented coreaudiod and found that it was insanely trying to open com.apple.audio.SystemSettings.plist again and again (/Library/Preferences/Audio).

I just updated the config from my friends Lion MBP and restarted, that fixed the problem for me.

My guess is somehow my audio preferences were corrupted and updating it fixed the issue.

Hope this helps someone in my situation 🙂

-Samit