Sound stuttering after Mountain Lion install

@jimoase - Any word from Apple yet? It's been over a month that we sent files to Apple...

And, to everyone else still reading this forum...

I have heard nothing from Apple. In fact, today I just connected an audio switcher to my Mac so I can switch my computer speakers between my Mac and my iPod Touch. I cannot believe Apple hasn't fixed this issue or at least given us a clue as to why it's occuring. (Will 10.9 Mavericks fix it?)

I am tired of listening to music which skips.... So, my "crude work-around" is to switch my speakers to my iPod to listen to non-skipping music....

It's hard to believe a $3000 Mac Pro cannot correctly play audio. Sad really...

(End of my daily rant).

Apple Support Communities' thread searching is lacking, so forgive me if someone has already recommended this...

I had this stuttering audio issue for quite a while and discovered in another forum that Perian was causing the problem. Perian had it's audio output set to one of the Dolby Pro Logic options by default.

I changed it back to Stereo and the stuttering/skipping problems I had been experiencing were resolved. I assume this was somehow modifying the audio stream from any app using QuickTime (or Core Audio / Video ?) for playback and was causing the playback issues. Even if you do not have Perian installed, it may be worthwhile to try removing all QuickTime components (/Library/QuickTime/ and ~/Library/QuickTime/) you have installed and rebooting to see if that resolves your issue.

I hope this helps.

---

Chris

Mid 2009 15" MacBook Pro (MacBookPro5,3)

2.66 Ghz, 8 GB, 60 GB SSD (Optical Drive Bay), 1 TB HDD, OS X 10.8.4

Sorry to report Apple has been fairly silent since uploading some files from my computer.

I have continued to collect pause events since them and have a growing folder of these files. Just looking at the date/time stamp in the file titles is showing a pattern that on my computer indicates a repeating time stamp in two flavors. The long duration is repeating at approximately 30 minutes and there is an longer duration inner loop of a short repeat cycle. About every 4...5th 30 minutes stutter will have a one to five minuter repeat stutter within.

The stutters happen so often I am now beginning to pickup a pattern of what will often create a stutter when I am doing text entry. A long period of entries followed by a long period of no activity will often result in a stutter. Changing entry modes, ie.... text entry changed to a delete and back will create a stutter. Of course the pattern is not absolute even though recognizable.

The seemly slow progress of 10.8.5 as measured in number and time period of BETA releases seems to indicate Apple is working on a tough nut to crack. My thoughts is the stuttering problem is a tough nut.

Fingers crossed ... we venture forth.

Caesar113 -

Thanks for the Perian suggestion. I didn't re-install Perian after doing my clean install of Mountain Lion (and I had actually disabled it on Snow Leopard because it was causing issues with Final Cut Express).

I didn't have anything in ~/Library/QuickTime, but had 3 files in /Library/QuickTime. I compressed with tar.gz and then trashed them and rebooted. Unfornately, it didn't help any...

AppleIntermediateCodec.component

AppleMPEG2Codec.component

LAMEEncoder.component

I had thought that maybe, just maybe, LAME could have been doing something since the file date is 2006... but it didn't matter.

Still waiting on Apple to come up with a solution....

Thanks again for your feedback, maybe it will solve the issue for someone else. It was worth a try.

Maybe this is an ephiffany on a source of the stufftering problem.

I use my MBP and iTunes while taking trips with my old truck. Today while heading west on US 12 from Miles City, MT towards North Dakota I noticed on a particularly rough section of road that a stutter happened nearly everytime after hitting a harsh bump.

On smooth roads the stuffter happened in 30...45 minute intervals.

I think MBPs have an accelerometer to protect the computer during a fall. What happens if that routine gets faulse triggers?

That is an interesting thought!

I just discovered after my post regarding Perian the other day, that my older (2007) MBP does display this issue even after a format and fresh install of Mountain Lion. It would seem to be CPU spike related on this laptop. If this machine is sitting there simply playing songs in iTunes, it plays without problem. If I have a browser open and open up a lot of tabs (say, opening more than 4 tabs from top sites) as I commonly do (both Safari and Chrome can be used to reproduce the problem for me), iTunes begins skipping/stuttering. Interesetingly, other apps playing the same files as iTunes don't exhibit this issue. Streaming music using Radium while opening a plethora of tabs in a browser does not result in skipping/stuttering either.

I have an SSD in the optical drive bay on this old MBP as well, so the sudden motion sensor wouldn't apply (and I would hope OS X would apply it to an SSD to begin with). I can try creating a small iTunes library on the SSD and see if playback from this library displays the same issue. I will report back later.

Oh and one other interesting thing to note... the skipping/stuttering doesn't occur if I set iTunes to playback to an AirPlay speaker (Philips)/AirPlay enabled home theater receiver (Pioneer). I can't get my head around that one. It would seem to disqualify the SMS idea, but I'm still going to test it out anyways.

But actually, do anyone go for a reparation in an Apple Store ? I had this problem on a june 2012 MBPr, but Apple remplace it because I had several problems (screen flickering...) Now, I have a february 2013, but the sounds problem still persist I personnaly think it's a Mountain Lion issue...

About the cause and remedy of stuttering. I am going with the meal of spicy foods followed by a big dish of ice cream theory as we wait for 10.8.5. Come on ice cream!!!!

For me, I don't have crackling with earpods. The bigest problem I have is with web radio, like TuneIn. When I listen radio on Mac or windows (on my mac), I got crackling same on Hd 4000 than GT 650M... I continue to test, but i'm a little bit lost... I hope that I will have Maverick for free, because I got my new mac 4 days ago

OSX 10.8.5 has arrived.. big deal... it did not fix stuttering.

I am creating an email and walla "fixed Mail" stutters as it has for the last few years. Big ole beach ball while no characters appear on the screen. Nothing for a second or two. Multiple processors running at gigahertz speeds and keyboard input is slower than 20 years ago with one 8mhz processor.

Call me old fashion. I fixed this problem decades ago on a NASA Langley project before the Moon Walk.

Nice ..... ARGH!!!! Are all the critical thinkers retired?

Now we have to wait for Maverick to see if it still stutters... Ufda!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Apple spoke today... they released 10.8.5 Its a dud.

Stuttering continues. I can still type faster than OSX can figure out what I am doing. I am old and I am slow... OSX 10.8.X is a glacier quick system.... and I am evolutionary quick.

Haven't tried iTunes yet. Anyone?

These are the guys who think melting ice causes global flooding. Fill a glass with crushed ice, then add water to the brim. Take a picture. Let the ice melt. Get any extra water, flooding. Damm... could have been a water maker.... freezing water and melting it does not make more water. Remember both ice cap poles are climatic deserts. Doesn't snow up there. Blows a lot. Every spring ice and snow over land melts first, makes pot holes in the roads. Then the shoreline, then the ice on the lakes. Where did the flooding Al talked about come from?

With 10.8.5 installed the stuttering problem on my MBP with 16gig RAM is the same or worse as before the installation.

Any one else?

I have been following this thread for a few weeks since taking the upgrade to Mountain Lion 10.8.3 broke audio in Ableton Live. At first I thought it was an issue with Live or a a plug-in and went throught the troubleshooting steps everyone else has been through. However I could get the audio dropouts to happen, albeit not as severe, by taxing the CPU while listening to spotify.

Update to 10.8.4 did not solve the problem.

I finally bit the bullet and backed up and re-installed. Some hours later I still had audio issues. However I had not really done a clean install. After the install I went with the "copy user folder" option to put my data back. What I didn't realise is that this will also change system components that are linked to any apps that come across too.

I don't know what app or component it was - I have added and removed many audio tools and apps over the last 5 years since I last did a brand new install - but something was still wrong.

This weekend I did a clean install and didn't migrate anything. After install the only thing I did was take the Apple update and install Ableton and Max again. All audio issues have been resolved.

I have now added back the audio components that I actuall need, no Perian or other QT plug-ins yet, and things are still stable and I can use my studio again.

So for those still having issues after an update it would seem that there are some combinations of kext/component that do not get fixed in the update. It's lot more effort than a backup then migrate and any apps for which you no longer have installation files can not be brought over but if you need the audio working more than that cracked copy of CS4 then its worth a try.

I can definitely confirm that the 10.8.5 Update did not solve the issue. I am on my Mac Pro right now and it happens when I go to full screen with quicktime player. Only during the resizing animation of the window though. It seems to be related to graphical animations.

I've have been affected by this issue since I installed Mountain Lion on my rMBP last year and it also occurs on my Mac Pro which I got in July.

I hope Mavericks will solve this issue...