FIX: sustained 12-15% coreaudiod CPU usage on M1-* (possibly intel too)

[mikeshep]

Hi from OP, forgot to come back and say I found the problem. The old audio editor app I primarily use -was the cause, entirely. Trashed the prefs and the problem completely resolved. This is kind of routine maintenance for an app that's no longer supported on newer OS. I just blanked out on thinking about that. The app is capable of monopolizing core audio if the Prefs file becomes corrupted somehow. At least I know to do this going forward, if the problem recurs. Thanks for the input. I appreciate it.

 

[jlooper1980]

If you've ported your user profile from Mac to Mac over several years, as I have, you may have noticed coreaudiod using a heap of CPU when not playing audio. Essentially once it starts the daemon, it constantly uses 12-15% CPU. THis may impact battery life, performance, etc. Likely 12-15% because it is 100% of a single core.

If this is the case, you may be missing the folder

• ~/Library/Preferences/Audio

from your user account. This folder is apparently created on user creation on new users, but if your user account is 15 years old like mine (or maybe nowhere near that old, but ported from another machine), it may not be there. It is used to store audio coreaudiod preferences for your user account (somehow/something).

This causes coreaudiod to freak out somewhat and hang on 12-15% CPU consumption constantly once it starts (e.g., you play some sound, fire up zoom, etc. it stays on 12-15% until you reboot).

Fix?

Verify whether or not that folder exists, and if not, open a terminal window and type:

• mkdir ~/Library/Preferences/Audio
• sudo chown _coreaudiod:admin ~/Library/Preferences/Audio

edit: confirmed the chown line is required for the problem to be resolved

And reboot. You should now notice coreaudiod is not constantly high up in activity monitor! In fact, if not playing/recording audio it shouldn't even be running!


edit:
This can not have been good for battery life, and may be why some people are seeing much worse than expected on the new machines.

This solution worked like a champ! THANK YOU!! That folder did not exist on my MacBook...followed your simple steps above, rebooted and presto! CPU % was off the charts before, now down to a very low "normal" number.

 

[hakkikonu]

All of the other attempts are not a solution. They're a kind of brute force.

If you need to define a problem, observe it and then take action.

1. How to observe?

In your terminal, run this command to listen to which services/apps are calling coreaudio process.

lsof | grep -i coreaudio

2. Then kill/close related apps or services.

3. Be happy

 

[smithrh]

I have an Intel mini and after upgrading to Sonoma I periodically get a combination of very high CPU usage by the audiomxd process coupled with a nasty memory leak.

Typically, force killing the process once or twice from Activity Monitor stops the problem for days, but it can recur.

Of note, I did not have the directory as noted by the original post so I added it and changed owners, we'll see if that rectifies anything.

 

[helgrind]

If you've ported your user profile from Mac to Mac over several years, as I have, you may have noticed coreaudiod using a heap of CPU when not playing audio. Essentially once it starts the daemon, it constantly uses 12-15% CPU. THis may impact battery life, performance, etc. Likely 12-15% because it is 100% of a single core.

If this is the case, you may be missing the folder

• ~/Library/Preferences/Audio

from your user account. This folder is apparently created on user creation on new users, but if your user account is 15 years old like mine (or maybe nowhere near that old, but ported from another machine), it may not be there. It is used to store audio coreaudiod preferences for your user account (somehow/something).

This causes coreaudiod to freak out somewhat and hang on 12-15% CPU consumption constantly once it starts (e.g., you play some sound, fire up zoom, etc. it stays on 12-15% until you reboot).

Fix?

Verify whether or not that folder exists, and if not, open a terminal window and type:

• mkdir ~/Library/Preferences/Audio
• sudo chown _coreaudiod:admin ~/Library/Preferences/Audio

edit: confirmed the chown line is required for the problem to be resolved

And reboot. You should now notice coreaudiod is not constantly high up in activity monitor! In fact, if not playing/recording audio it shouldn't even be running!


edit:
This can not have been good for battery life, and may be why some people are seeing much worse than expected on the new machines.

This solved my problem of having _coreaudiod at 17% all time to 0%. Thank you very much!

 

[haginile]

FWIW, mine is a refresh install of macOS Sonoma and I don't have the audio folder under ~/Library/Preferences and I don't experience the CPU usage issue...