I feel for the sound editors, musicians, and people with very sensitive hearing for whom this problem is a dealbreaker, but I have not yet heard a single sound from my Studio, and I'm neither particularly old nor particularly hard of hearing. Would highly recommend the Studio to people who are concerned about this issue but live with the noise of urban life and/or are primarily using the machine for video and photo work.
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Mac Studio Max - it's not that quiet
- Thread starter sixers22
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Are you sure your not seeing this altered by True Tone. I think True Tone for Mac OS came out after Catalina. If so you can go into display settings and shut off. True Tone is bad for Mac OS and unnecessary when the computer is in the same location all the time. If of course you do not have an apple branded display capable of the True Tone alterations, please disregard.
iStat Menus was updated for Mac Studio support. I dropped the fans to 1150 and 1250 RPM for giggles and it removes the fan noise, but introduces a high-pitched whine. The same sound I hear briefly when the fans first spin up on idle. Seems like whatever fans they used appear to be suboptimal which is odd in a machine like this.
I've been comparing 3 Ultra vs 4 Max over the past two weeks.
The results were all the same, Ultra is slightly louder than the Max but about the same. I found their high-pitched resonance irritated my ears and disappointed me with the expectation that the studio would have a similar feel to the older M1 Macs.
The high-pitched resonance sound may or may not come out depending on the situation even in the same PRM, and may not be heard when it is overlapped with other noise of a specific frequency. Because of this characteristic, it seems that some people can hear it well and others can't hear it. I had the opportunity to compare a total of 7 studios and they were all identical and there was no difference in assembly quality.
Yesterday, I finally decided to go with the Ultra and even bought the AppleCare Plus. As I've been doing a lot of testing over the past two weeks with noise issues, But I've been wondering. How big is this noise to me? I remembered that it was still a very very ultra quiet desktop computer compared to others.
Enjoy of your studio for a few days without worrying about noise issues. and try comprehensive evaluation of the studio itself.
You'll definitely be satisfied
The results were all the same, Ultra is slightly louder than the Max but about the same. I found their high-pitched resonance irritated my ears and disappointed me with the expectation that the studio would have a similar feel to the older M1 Macs.
The high-pitched resonance sound may or may not come out depending on the situation even in the same PRM, and may not be heard when it is overlapped with other noise of a specific frequency. Because of this characteristic, it seems that some people can hear it well and others can't hear it. I had the opportunity to compare a total of 7 studios and they were all identical and there was no difference in assembly quality.
Yesterday, I finally decided to go with the Ultra and even bought the AppleCare Plus. As I've been doing a lot of testing over the past two weeks with noise issues, But I've been wondering. How big is this noise to me? I remembered that it was still a very very ultra quiet desktop computer compared to others.
Enjoy of your studio for a few days without worrying about noise issues. and try comprehensive evaluation of the studio itself.
You'll definitely be satisfied
I guess that "high pitch" noise is outside my register. Bummer that some are able to notice the "noise".
FWIW, my Mac Studio is 1-2db louder than my ambient room noise level.
Congrats!
The video i watched this week seemed miserable. Like a whistling sun roof with a bad seal.
Outside my register as well, the only 'noise' I hear is the movement of air and that is only if I put my ears right next to the outlet. I have no high pitch whine or noise on my studio.
You guys must either have super sensitive hearing or duff fans.
Who needs the comics when you can read this thread on a daily basis.
If it's not fan bearings then it could be a power supply component. If so the whine should change in volume or frequency under a heavier or lighter load. Whether its fan or power supply related it's possible some units have it and some don't. I have absolutely none of the whine so I can't test it, but someone that does should see if the volume or pitch changes during a benchmark test that draws more current from the power supply (the fans never change from the 1325-1340 rpm idle speed under load so that would mean it's the power supply).
So true, but I dealt with this back on 2011 with a Mac mini that buzzed, so I feel everyone's pain. I had to put a heavy weight on or run it in a vertical orientation (you can see my posts on it in this forum). So now, I'm debating whether to get a Mac Studio, a 16" MacBook Pro to mainly use as a desktop, or just use my 14" MBP that I'm typing on now - my carry everywhere, do everything, family uses it, leave it in the kitchen, etc. computer.
I think the best way to test it is to use a fan controller to increase the fan speed without stressing the CPU. That way you can isolate the potential causes. But if you can stress the CPU/GPU without increasing fan speed, that would be a good test too.
Good luck finding anything that will cause the fan speed to increase other than an app that's designed to control the fan speed. So there is no problem stressing the CPU/GPU without increasing the fan speed.
I,
Beta of macs-fan-control for Mac Studio.
github.com
Best
Beta of macs-fan-control for Mac Studio.
Mac Studio 2022 support · Issue #586 · crystalidea/macs-fan-control
Fan control actually works but no sensors support yet. Anyone got M1 Ultra model maybe? 🙄
github.com
Best
I definitely hear the high pitched noise without having to pump up my speakers very much at all. That would annoy the heck out of me. I would definitely exchange this if I had one like this. How long is the exchange process taking these days?
For me, the presence of fan noise is not an issue since some of my RAID devices have very noticeable fans. What would be annoying though is the high pitched whine that @wind2022 recorded. To me, that's not normal and should not be expected to come from any computer product, certainly not for any sustained amount of time.
My ultra arrived today and I can definitely hear the fan whine only in a total silent room (not the standard air moving fan noise) . It's very high pitched and stops as soon as I turn the studio in sleep mode. I also hear slight variations of it when changing rpm so don't think it's coil whine. Most of the time I work with a headset on or there is some more ambient noise going on though. So.. I am going to think about it. Still a bummer.
Out of curiosity, has anyone who has returned a Mac Studio (either model) for noise issues received a non-noisy replacement? Or did the replacement make similar noises?
There was a guy (maybe in a different thread) who got a new one that didn’t have the whine. It was made in malaysia.
My PC has 6 fans running all the time, and that is not counting the 3 on my 3080 graphics card, which runs at 0 RPMs until under load.
Regular air flow noise doesn't bother me. After using PCs for decades, I find it relaxing actually. But that high pitched sound was terrible on the M1 Max Studio that I returned. It was giving me headaches.
Regular air flow noise doesn't bother me. After using PCs for decades, I find it relaxing actually. But that high pitched sound was terrible on the M1 Max Studio that I returned. It was giving me headaches.
M1 Max here with Studio Display. Set it all up for the first time today and have used them for several hours. I can hear the flow of air through the Mac Studio and I can hear the Studio Display fans if I put my ear to the top vents. Both exhibit the sound of soft airflow that’s pretty similar to the 2019 iMac 27” they replaced. Nothing to complain about here, and all seems as I would have expected.
Can you try increasing the fan to 1750 RPM? @ggeoffre mentioned that the high pitch goes away on/above 1750 RPM here.
I have returned mine, so I can't test it right now. It would be nice if that observation is consistent across Mac Studio units. I wouldn't mind (the air moving noise) by slightly increasing the fan RPM baseline to avoid the high pitch.