Q: Sound stuttering after Mountain Lion install

I have horrific stuttering as well when playing vevo in Chrome.  I primarily use an older Mac Pro at home, though I have several other Mac laptops.  I had waited to go to ML until they finally fixed the Notes problem with IMAP server prefix.  Now I discover there's still an even worse audio stutter problem.

Anytime I do something in another window, the audio starts to stutter.  It gets worse the more acitvity I do.  Sometimes I still get stutter when it seems I'm not doing anything.

I only had very occasional stutter in Lion.  But in ML it's pretty much constant as long as I am doing anything else.  Very unimpressed with ML and it's been out for quite some time.  Has way more bugs than it's worth.

I had awful stuttering and dropout problems when streaming audio to my Airport Express from my MacBook Pro, starting when I went from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion.  Upgrading the AE to the latest firmware 7.6.3 greatly improved things, and going to 10.8.3 made them even better.  Dropouts are now rare to non-existent.  Note that the previous stutter and dropouts occurred with both iTunes streaming itself, or the streaming controlled by Airfoil.

Finally after 8 months my imac 2011 is finally fixed!!!  The latest update fixes the audio problems!  I hope others have this fix as well!  Finally can unsubscribe from this post!

I got really scared after the update to the Holy 10.8.3 on my mid-2007 iMac, to find out that it did NOT solve my stuttering in iTunes while switching windows/apps. After trying 2 (old) tricks it seems so much better now, no more stuttering. And with that my spare memory is much better used it seems. So better performance all over, pfeww!

1 Check disk in DiskUtility (took very long) then check permission, be safe and do it at least twice.

2 Start up in Single User Mode (command S) and repair your disk again with /sbin/fsck -fy (after the root prompt) If it is not ok or changed something, retry. When satisfied, type reboot.

Oh point 3; I have no knowledge as an Apple engineer, I have different Macs since 1997 and I this was the first time ever, I had a really bad (new) OS X system from Apple.

So it's good now for me again, I hope someone have any use from my tips if the problem still exists.

chiu2 wrote:

 

Finally after 8 months my imac 2011 is finally fixed!!!  The latest update fixes the audio problems!  I hope others have this fix as well!  Finally can unsubscribe from this post!

The "fix" you are experiencing could be related to what happens after the update finished updating. Certain caches etc are re-written etc etc etc....

If the problem comes back (Not saying it will) which is likely due to 10.8.3 NOT fixing all the sandboxing issues, then try booting into safe mode followed by a normal boot. That till caretake the problem on a temp. basis.

Mountain Lion is a fantastic OS for stuff like Mail and other office things. For high performance apps, the OS and perhaps more the direction in which it is going, is for the first time in my life making me consider windows. Not because I like windows (I hate it) but because OS X is no longer providng a reliable high performance environment for professional applications.

Can someone give me a link to the thread(s) that describe the stuttering that preceded Mountain Lion?

Congratulations to Apple for fixing the audio stuttering problem for 2011 Mac users. My only complaint is that you seemed to have left out all the 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2012 users. (at least from the reports I'm hearing)

I'm not even a pro! I just want to listen to iTunes and Spotify!

Please, please end my grieving.

"Anytime I do something in another window, the audio starts to stutter.  It gets worse the more acitvity I do.  Sometimes I still get stutter when it seems I'm not doing anything."

This has been my experience with audio and video too.

Is it a coincidence that typing is most often stutters to be displayed.  On occasions the typed characters are lost no matter the duration of the wait.  On occasion the typed characters fail to appear until a forth character is entered.

I suspect that the stuttering audio problem is related to the stuttering typed entry problem. 

Any one experiencing the stuttering audio also experiencing stuttering character entry in:

Safari?

Mail?

TextEdit?

I have a MacBook Pro 17" 16gig RAM, 50% free disk space, running 10.8.3. and I am and have been experiencing these problems since installing 10.8.  Those stuttering issues is why I installed 16 gigs RAM and turned paging off

As with Chris Vice, my late 2009 core i7 iMac is stuttering slightly worse after the 10.8.3 update - very disappointing.

I'm on 10.7.5 now Roland, and everything is back to normal. I can't believe I've waited nearly 6 months for a fully functioning system. I don't even know why I've upgraded to Mountain Lion, I'm not missing anything.

OS 11 better be the best OS ever and not another iOS for Mac's, we wan't something professional Apple!

Has anybody tried getting one of those external USB sound cards that gamers use on laptops? There seem to be many available from £1 to £100+, and quite a few claim to be mac compatible. I use external speakers rather than the built in ones so in theory this could work for me but I have no idea if the nature of the stuttering problem would also manifest itself over USB. Not do I know what the sound quality would be like - I am a bit suspicious at the £1 end of the price spectrum!

I have a rMBP 8GB mid 2012 ml 10.8.3 (12D78) and i have this problem.

Hardware problem??

thanks in advance.

I have a MBP 17, with 16gigs RAM and have the stuttering problem not just with audio, also with typing being displayed, downloads and video.

Never had stuttering of any kind before the upgrade to 10.8

Judging by the range of reports I would judge the problem software. 

Can't confirm.

i've the stutter adio on 3 different mac!retina 15' , mac pro dual quad , macbook pro early 2009...in early 2009 the stuttering coming from lion update...my problem are evident in audio playback when skipe the track in itunes or play and scroll the video in youtube or load the plug-in in logic in playback..expecially when the playback coincidances with the kik-drum coincides with the skip or loadig plug-in in logic or all professional audio software...