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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

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

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.

1,223 replies

Dec 5, 2012 10:12 AM in response to pepper_chico

Pepper. Their support DOES suck. How many months have gone by and we are now just finding out about a "possible" solution. I'm not convinced till I see it with my own two, but what do you expect me to say? Oh no, don't release a fix.


You're a Fanboi and are a glutton for punishment evidently. Personally, I want a fix. If I vent about all the hiccups their terrible services induce, then there's a logical reason for it. But make no mistake, I'm pretty much done with Macs for the foreseeable future after this experience. But having them address this issue is a better alternative than having to employ someone to force their hand.

Dec 5, 2012 11:51 AM in response to BarrettF77

Me? Fanboy? In the last weeks I needed to buy a new super duper MagSafe charger (another trap of $150 bucks! here), this thing was failing even in warranty (I think some capacitor), but dumbly I thought it was some super wise routine the behavior of stopping charging, to calibrate it from time to time, my bad to give attention for such a bullshіt: it died just when I was in the middle reinstalling ML on my old (I'm talking of a 2011 model) failing stock HDD (dammіt what a cheap/slow HDD - pure crap). Never charged again.


I've bought a new very expensive MagSafe (beware the Apple ecosystem trap!) adapter, a HDD/SSD hybrid Seagate 750, that yeah, for a very fair price (not so much more than a MagSafe!), is worth every penny. I've bought 16GB of OWC RAM too.


Now this is what it aways should have been.


Still I yet suffer from this issue (very well known in the Apple issue subculture, just wait for it to get you!):

Continuing issues (and solutions) for the MBP's silent speaker problem

I'm affraid of the solutions which suggests replacing the Logic Board.


I'm not even talking about the chineses!


As I said before, because of all this, this is the first and last time I buy Apple stuff.

I can change my mind only to buy refurbished stuff to upgrade with "my own hardware" that works.

The Apple notebook skin is still nice.


I was trying to just be realistic.

Dec 5, 2012 7:05 PM in response to Analooog

Fingers crossed that 10.8.3 Beta shows a major improvement regarding this issue then.


I also have the mid '11 27" with the AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB


I've tried 3 re-installs a couple of months back and decided to go back to Lion until the issue will be resolved. Since the Messages beta for Lion ends as well december 14th I really hope they're able to resolve it before the end of the year.

Dec 6, 2012 2:39 AM in response to tttxx

And after a week of using the 10.8.3 which is over half a gig "which many be buggy" i have naver had a smoother system. Everything works as it should. If you really want to just find out. Time machine your system and torrent it like most people. Second option, compare system specs for 2 months till it is realeased. Trust me if you own a 27inch Imac mid 2011 and sick of the stutter as i was just download the beta.

Dec 6, 2012 7:09 AM in response to FrederikY

I'm waiting too. I had someone from Executive Relations and she simply dumped me back with a Customer Relations rep. The relations rep, again like a broken record, "let's get someone in tech support to troubleshoot this issue". Explained about this thread and was told that "anyone can post anything on there". Point taken, but I'm sure we love to participate on this thread because our lives are so boring and we have nothing better to do than make stuff up and gripe about it. In addition to that, she says that Apple doesn't tell their customers about upcoming fixes. To which I asked how a customer is to trust them with such a high price tag when 6 months in I still have no fix? My business/money, recomendations, and professional influence are tired of these games. It may have worked when Steve was alive, but Steve also cracked the whips on them to get a fix. Now they are just quiet, lazy, and respond if they so feel inclined without recourse. Plan B it is now.


Apple support, go take a hike. Come back after you have something meaningful to contribute. I would trust a theif with my Mac over apple's phone support. At least I know my problem is gone with the thief and insurance will give me a true solution.


And Apple has all these VPs selling off their stock. Looks like the one trick pony has shown all it has to offer. Innovation, service, and reliablity are sadly dead.

Dec 6, 2012 4:38 PM in response to FrederikY

What did you do, ask them directly?


If 10.8.3 beta doesn't break everything and can be updated to 10.8.3 without reinstalling, I'd love to give it a try to see if it fixes my audio issues. The marks on the screen I can ignore, I can even ignore the backlight buzzing... But I quite simply cannot ignore the random lockups. It's impossible. It's not a sound that comes and goes, it's not a faint grey mark on the screen... IT'S THE ENTIRE ******* COMPUTER LOCKING UP. I cannot stand this. You'd think they'd do extended QC testing on their most recent hardware models before pushing out major OS upgrades...

Sound stuttering after Mountain Lion install

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