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tttxx Author

Level 1

10 points

Sound stuttering after Mountain Lion install

Dear community,

after having installed OSX Mountain Lion my sound startet stuttering whenever there is rapid movement on my screen.

This includes e.g. window movement, scrolling through image loaded websites or video playback (flash player, quicktime).

A restart didn't help. I'm using stereo output, not digital.

I have connected a second monitor but the problem persists after disconnecting it. Movement on the second monitor also causes the sound to stutter.

My GPU Diode temperature is at 85°C (there is some bug that keeps the GPU under load while a second monitor is connected AFAIK), but I guess it was the same under Snow Leopard.

In Snow Leopard the sound output was always perfect even under heavy load or heavy HDD I/O.

Any ideas?

iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Jul 28, 2012 5:48 AM

Top-ranking reply

chilblane

Level 1

5 points

Posted on Jul 28, 2012 3:22 PM

I am also having this issue as well.

I opened Activity Monitor and noticed that during the stuttering, coreaudiod jumps in CPU usage, often past 5%. I have also noticed graphics lag when this occurs if I'm doing something like watching full-screen video or gaming.

I'm currently experiencing this on mid 2011 iMac 27" as well as a 24" iMac 2009 model I use at work.

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1,223 replies

Analooog

Level 1

0 points

Nov 2, 2012 3:07 PM in response to tttxx

Maybe we should try to get connection with upcoming 10.8.3 beta release testers so they could report the problem increase awareness of the problem among people developing OS X.

Nov 3, 2012 5:42 AM in response to designaholic

Yes, you have exactly the same stuttering.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4901853/stutter.m4a

But my iMac doesn't have kernel panics…

Nov 4, 2012 6:14 AM in response to tttxx

Yup, those two stuttering effects are the same as mine was under Mountain Lion....

I say was...

After a month or two of reverting back to Lion and having no issues at all - Lion has now started doing it...!

For me, its always been the video as much as the stuttering.

Rubbish quality with low volume but:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfO94OTFmw&feature=player_embedded

Nov 4, 2012 6:32 AM in response to IBurchett

Looks like your video card is going south. Either that or it's overheating. I know Mountain Lion greatly elevated computer temperatures and slowed the fans which likely has done irreversible harm to many people's computers. I'm running the apple hardware test on mine as I'm at the end of my rope with Apple.

I guess the next step is one I can't talk about on here. But I'm sure you guys can infer.

Miysis

Level 1

0 points

Nov 4, 2012 7:03 AM in response to BarrettF77

After weeks with the stuttering bug and 2? patches i'm back on Lion. Running 10.7.5 without any problems.

My experience with this bug is that it seems to be something related to temperature. When gaming (WoW, Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2) the stuttering occurs on 50+ deg celsius, with smc fan control utility the temperature could be keeped under 50 deg but with terrible loud ventilators.

With Lion now the temperature rises over 50 deg without tuning up the ventilators and without the stuttering. Enjoying the silence in my room!

Analooog

Level 1

0 points

Nov 6, 2012 11:45 AM in response to Miysis

I would like to reinstall 10.7 too, but I can't, because lacking external HDD for backup, or is there any option I can store files in my internal disk while doing reinstall?

Nov 7, 2012 11:18 AM in response to Analooog

Checking in. Since it's been about 6 weeks since Apple had employees reach out to use over this issue. Anyone reporting any updates yet?

Nov 7, 2012 11:21 AM in response to tttxx

Ok, so today is a happy day 😀 since I got an answer of the Apple Care Senior Advisor!

No groundbreaking news, but hey, I've got a reply!

Many apologies for the delay in response.

I have not received anything back from Engineering after I delivered the logs to them. I will follow up and see if any progress has been made.

Nov 7, 2012 11:23 AM in response to FrederikY

That's good you're getting a response. Now to see if they reply back with any substance. I'm about to ask for replacement of both my affected machines since they obviously can't seem to code software correctly for a year old machine.

Morgan R

Level 2

228 points

Nov 7, 2012 11:29 AM in response to BarrettF77

It's extremely annoying that this issue still hasn't been resolved! My school is purchasing over 120 MacBook Pros at the end of this month. I really hope this issue is fixed in 10.8.3.

Speaking of 10.8.3, has anyone heard anything about the issue being addressed in the patch notes?

Nov 7, 2012 12:57 PM in response to BarrettF77

My system was collected by Apple and shipped off somewhere for testing. I will get a replacment system tomorrow, just waiting UPS delivery, I see it is in transit.

Nov 7, 2012 1:02 PM in response to Victor In Munich

So the issue in your case was hardware related? Please let us know what you find out.

Nov 7, 2012 2:05 PM in response to designaholic

I am 100% sure its ML related as when I went back to Lion I had no issues. reinstall ML and in minutes, the issues were back.

I doubt they will tell me what they find.

They wanted my system back in the exact condition I had it, with keyboard, trackpad etc, Just the removal of my personal documents and unregister serialised software like Adobe Elements (but not uninstall anything).

I guess they need to analyse a system that has the issues do find out wt* is going on.

Nov 7, 2012 2:12 PM in response to Victor In Munich

My stuttering started when I installed Lion, so no.

Nov 7, 2012 2:13 PM in response to tttxx

Apple contacted me from seeing my posts on this thread. They took log files and never replied back.

I got my money back (and some free movie credits) and rolled back to Lion. There was still crackling on Lion; if you search Google you will see although not as common, there were audio issues on Lion too. And these issues were never resolved, they just moved forward and shipped ML, and audio issues grew!!! I jumped from SL to ML.

Next I rolled back to SL, rock solid audio again. Never a pop! Clean efficient OS no with trendy social networking crap or notifications or other baggage. SL was their best piece of work, at least it worked!

Keep posting, if this thread needs to reach 1 million posts then so be it, I won't stop posting, and I won't upgrade until I see they have fixed audio for everyone on L and LM.

Peace.

Sound stuttering after Mountain Lion install