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DeppJones

macrumors member
May 23, 2019
54
9
Germany
touch the modification date on /Library/Extensions, then reboot. You're probably booting from the prelinked kernel, which was assembled with 10.14.5

btw, what is 10.15.5 like? Any new features?

What do you mean with „touch“?

10.15.5 was a mistake :)
 

crjackson2134

macrumors 601
Mar 6, 2013
4,847
1,957
Charlotte, NC
Thanks for your support but the "touch" command didn't help. The kernel in system information is still 18.6.0 and the file dates and times didn't change in S/L/E

Is there any additional command or option necessary or should "sudo touch /Library/Extensions" work?

That’s beyond my skills or knowledge. I was only helping out with the actual touch command information. I hope you get it figured out.
 

reader50

macrumors member
Apr 9, 2003
37
20
California
DeppJones, do you have another volume to boot from? Mojave or High Sierra, for APFS compatibility. If so, try doing the touch command on your regular Mojave Extensions folder - while booted from another system. That way Mojave won't have a chance to update the prelinked kernel during shutdown. Type "sudo touch ", then drag the regular extensions folder into the Terminal window.

I'm not sure if Mojave is doing this, but Moj has sometimes resisted my attempts to force a long boot. Which is what you need to load the older kernel version.
 

DeppJones

macrumors member
May 23, 2019
54
9
Germany
DeppJones, do you have another volume to boot from? Mojave or High Sierra, for APFS compatibility. If so, try doing the touch command on your regular Mojave Extensions folder - while booted from another system. That way Mojave won't have a chance to update the prelinked kernel during shutdown. Type "sudo touch ", then drag the regular extensions folder into the Terminal window.

I'm not sure if Mojave is doing this, but Moj has sometimes resisted my attempts to force a long boot. Which is what you need to load the older kernel version.

Yes, I have a partition with 10.14.4.

I will boot this partition, type „sudo touch“ and pull the S/L/E folder of the 10.14.5 into the terminal, right!? The date and time of the folder changed but the files inside didn‘t change.

With another way, it‘s working for me but I don‘t think it‘s a good idea. I‘ve just copied the prelinkedkernel of the 10.14.4 into the folder of the 10.14.5. System information says „18.2.0“ and the stuttering is gone.
 

DeppJones

macrumors member
May 23, 2019
54
9
Germany
10.14.4 or 10.14.3 ?

My bad! The partition of 10.14.4 has already the kernel of 10.14.3 from former modifications. So it's 10.14.3

Unfortunately, I can't manage it to create or update the prelinkedkernel. If I boot 10.14.4 and delete the prelinkedkernel in the 10.14.5 partition, the system won't boot the 10.14.5. Shouldn't create the system a new prelinkedkernel if there is none present?
 

Riff_Al

macrumors member
Feb 23, 2017
45
9
My bad! The partition of 10.14.4 has already the kernel of 10.14.3 from former modifications. So it's 10.14.3

Unfortunately, I can't manage it to create or update the prelinkedkernel. If I boot 10.14.4 and delete the prelinkedkernel in the 10.14.5 partition, the system won't boot the 10.14.5. Shouldn't create the system a new prelinkedkernel if there is none present?

It may be better to replace the kernel in the installer and then reinstall Mojave. Do you have 10.14.5 full installer?
 

DeppJones

macrumors member
May 23, 2019
54
9
Germany
It may be better to replace the kernel in the installer and then reinstall Mojave. Do you have 10.14.5 full installer?

Yes, I have the full installer. Downloaded it already to update the firmware to 144.0.0

Replacing only the kernel or must the prelinkedkernel be changed as well? Is it better to use kernel and prelinkedkernel from the 10.14.3 installer?
 
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Riff_Al

macrumors member
Feb 23, 2017
45
9
Replacing only the kernel or must the prelinkedkernel be changed as well? Is it better to use kernel and prelinkedkernel from the 10.14.3 installer?
Unfortunately, i do not know. I use 10.14.3 now.
But if you can find a solution, it will be useful for everyone.
 

UKenGB

macrumors regular
Feb 21, 2010
168
42
Surrey, UK
Only just started looking into this, although I've been experiencing the stuttering on my 4,1=>5,1 for a while now, but cannot say exactly when it started. Yet something else in which the Mac used to be so far ahead of the game has now become virtually unusable as the Mac continues to become ever worse in all those aspects that drew us to it in the first place. Anyway...

If I play music from iTunes out the analogue port, it glitches badly. If I send it out the digital port, it is very much better, but not perfect. But here's the odd thing, if I send the audio to an TV instead, it is PERFECT. Truly no glitches at all even after many hours of listening. Fortunately I can always do that so I have a workable solution, but it irks me so I continue to seek a solution.

If I send audio simultaneously to both the local analogue port AND an TV, with the volume down on the latter so I can hear the local output, it is almost perfect. In fact with only a very occasional stutter I initially thought it was perfect.

So it's nothing to do with getting the data out of storage, otherwise it wouldn't work to an TV. It has to be the software (apps or system) buggering around with the audio.

As I said, I cannot remember when it started, but is it perhaps when Safari made changes to how it sends audio and tries to keep it all in sync? An admirable aim and shouldn't be an issue sending to a single local output, but did those changes introduce some other problem perhaps.

I have a couple of X5690 CPUs waiting to be installed and from reading this thread, I'm hoping that will solve it. However, the blame cannot be laid on Intel's Gainstown CPUs since my Mac had those from new and it's only in the recent past that this problem has surfaced, introduced by Apple updates, so the blame has to be laid squarely at Apple's feet.
 
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tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,454
13,601
Only just started looking into this, although I've been experiencing the stuttering on my 4,1=>5,1 for a while now, but cannot say exactly when it started. Yet something else in which the Mac used to be so far ahead of the game has now become virtually unusable as the Mac continues to become ever worse in all those aspects that drew us to it in the first place. Anyway...

If I play music from iTunes out the analogue port, it glitches badly. If I send it out the digital port, it is very much better, but not perfect. But here's the odd thing, if I send the audio to an TV instead, it is PERFECT. Truly no glitches at all even after many hours of listening. Fortunately I can always do that so I have a workable solution, but it irks me so I continue to seek a solution.

If I send audio simultaneously to both the local analogue port AND an TV, with the volume down on the latter so I can hear the local output, it is almost perfect. In fact with only a very occasional stutter I initially thought it was perfect.

So it's nothing to do with getting the data out of storage, otherwise it wouldn't work to an TV. It has to be the software (apps or system) buggering around with the audio.

As I said, I cannot remember when it started, but is it perhaps when Safari made changes to how it sends audio and tries to keep it all in sync? An admirable aim and shouldn't be an issue sending to a single local output, but did those changes introduce some other problem perhaps.

I have a couple of 5590 CPUs waiting to be installed and from reading this thread, I'm hoping that will solve it. However, the blame cannot be laid on Intel's Gainstown CPUs since my Mac had those from new and it's only in the recent past that this problem has surfaced, introduced by Apple updates, so the blame has to be laid squarely at Apple's feet.
I’m failing to see why Apple has any blame here.

This only happens with MP4,1 dual processors, the same ones that lost support with El Capitan. No supported Mac has used this processors since 10.11 and it took 3 major releases to show any problems or incompatibility

It’s a tricky situation since no MP5,1 has this problem and you can’t submit bug reports for MP4,1 anymore.

Some day a Westmere only instruction will gonna be required and Nehalem Xeons will stop working for real. This day is near.
 
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UKenGB

macrumors regular
Feb 21, 2010
168
42
Surrey, UK
I’m failing to see why Apple has any blame here.

This only happens with MP4,1 dual processors, the same ones that lost support with El Capitan. No supported Mac has used this processors since 10.11 and it took 3 major releases to show any problems or incompatibility

It’s a tricky situation since no MP5,1 has this problem and you can’t submit bug reports for MP4,1 anymore.

Some day a Westmere only instruction will gonna be required and Nehalem Xeons will stop working for real. This day is near.

Not wishing to argue with Alex whose expertise I respect enormously, but there's plenty of reports of audio stuttering on later MacBook Pros (and no doubt others) which seems too much of a coincidence to be completely unrelated. However Apple will no doubt work to fix those, but as you say, a 4,1 is now obsolete so no chance of any fixes for those.

Which leads on to the other controversy. Apple makes too little effort to maintain compatibility with older Macs. They used to be a paragon of virtue in this respect. Bending over backwards to ensure that older Motorola chipped Macs still ran the latest software for the new Power PC based Macs, both of whose owners were rightfully contemptuous of their Windows brethren who often found themselves having to upgrade hardware. That's not how it is now. Not only do Apple not bother to maintain backward compatibility to this extent, but seem to blatantly use this to 'encourage' users to buy new hardware. I know there will be many who disagree with this, but I've been following Apple and using their hardware for nearly 40 years and it is quite obvious to me how they have changed. It now seems commonplace and acceptable to expect to re-buy all your electronic appliances every couple of years. Well sorry, I simply do not find that acceptable.

As for this audio issue, I realise this particular problem seems to be related to these older 'obsolete' Macs and their old CPUs, but who decided they are obsolete? Hey, the company who stands to benefit from you buying new hardware. Strange that.

Hopefully my 5690s should provide a cure - until the next time. Now, where are those de-lidding instructions...
 

mauriziodececco

macrumors newbie
Aug 30, 2013
28
22
Not wishing to argue with Alex whose expertise I respect enormously, but there's plenty of reports of audio stuttering on later MacBook Pros (and no doubt others) which seems too much of a coincidence to be completely unrelated. However Apple will no doubt work to fix those, but as you say, a 4,1 is now obsolete so no chance of any fixes for those.

Which leads on to the other controversy. Apple makes too little effort to maintain compatibility with older Macs. They used to be a paragon of virtue in this respect. Bending over backwards to ensure that older Motorola chipped Macs still ran the latest software for the new Power PC based Macs, both of whose owners were rightfully contemptuous of their Windows brethren who often found themselves having to upgrade hardware. That's not how it is now. Not only do Apple not bother to maintain backward compatibility to this extent, but seem to blatantly use this to 'encourage' users to buy new hardware. I know there will be many who disagree with this, but I've been following Apple and using their hardware for nearly 40 years and it is quite obvious to me how they have changed. It now seems commonplace and acceptable to expect to re-buy all your electronic appliances every couple of years. Well sorry, I simply do not find that acceptable.

As for this audio issue, I realise this particular problem seems to be related to these older 'obsolete' Macs and their old CPUs, but who decided they are obsolete? Hey, the company who stands to benefit from you buying new hardware. Strange that.

Hopefully my 5690s should provide a cure - until the next time. Now, where are those de-lidding instructions...

Well, Nehalem 4.1 can run High Sierra and get security updates just fine; the can use technologies that did not even existed when they came out, like usb3 and nvme ssd abd new graphic cards; my mac pro is something like 10 time more responsive that the expensive machine I bought ten years ago, and this thanks to Apple support; so no, i woudn’t say Apple do not support old machines.

About audio bug: they touched the code relative to audio to fix problems with the T2 coprocessor; si yes it is probable that the two problems are related in some way
 

tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,454
13,601
About audio bug: they touched the code relative to audio to fix problems with the T2 coprocessor; si yes it is probable that the two problems are related in some way
T2 audio bug is not related with the MP4,1 one, if it was MP5,1 would have the same problem. It’s probably something NUMA related since the same dual processor when installed in a single CPU tray works without the audio problem of the dual tray.
 

UKenGB

macrumors regular
Feb 21, 2010
168
42
Surrey, UK
Well, Nehalem 4.1 can run High Sierra and get security updates just fine; the can use technologies that did not even existed when they came out, like usb3 and nvme ssd abd new graphic cards; my mac pro is something like 10 time more responsive that the expensive machine I bought ten years ago, and this thanks to Apple support; so no, i woudn’t say Apple do not support old machines....

You are fortunate to feel loved and supported by Apple with your old Mac. I, on the other hand do not.

The latest OSX releases actually run perfectly (apart from this minor audio issue on some machines) meaning they did not need to make them obsolete and ensure their installer refuses to install the later OSX versions. They could have kept the 4,1 'alive' without any actual effort, which means they had other reasons why they prevented the 4,1 from updating. If there were significant technical reasons why the old Macs would not run the latest OS, that would be a valid reason to declare them obsolete. But we know that's not been true for the last few OSX releases, so the obvious and only conclusion is that they are trying to 'encourage' users to buy newer hardware.

Why could they not say they were stopping support for certain specified Macs, but still allow users to install the latest OSX - at their own risk. Not supported means NO trouble for them to deal with, but still allows those of us who wish to try and continue to use an older machine to do so - at our own risk. I'd be happy with that. I realise that they cannot continue to support old machines forever, but when there is no technical reason why an old Mac cannot actually run the new OSX, why actively prevent the user from even trying? As I said above, there is only one conclusion one can come to about that.

I am not an Apple hater, far from it and I use a LOT of their products and will likely continue to do so as it is still the best IMO. But I find this an unpalatable aspect of their behaviour.

Anyway, as an Apple user of over 30 years, that is my considered opinion and others may agree or disagree, but we are getting somewhat off-topic.
 

hatrack71

macrumors newbie
Jan 27, 2018
14
4
Helena, MT
This is a problem I have as well with my flashed 4,1 to 5,1 running dual E5520 2.26 quad core chips, 16G ram. I am at 10.14.5 with bootrom 144.0.0.0.0 and SMCs of 1.39f5. I am booting Mojave on an M.2 NVME PCI-e adapter in slot 1 x16 and a Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8G in slot 2 x16. No other cards. Same issues as everyone else... still have stuttering audio. Persists as well on my backup 7200 HDD of Mojave as well. No other issues at all and the system runs very quick.

High Sierra runs fine and there are no audio glitches at all. However, one problem I am having in High Sierra is there are no options for the RX-580 Displayport or HDMI in Sound. Unable to get sound out of speaker equipped Cinema Display or iMac used in Target Display mode with the proper adapters...while strangely they are NOT broken in Mojave (well, sound still stutters anyway.. but they are recognized at least and output sound) and show in the Sound menu when connected. Gotta say... I'm really disappointed with Apple on the RX-580 support. For supposedly being natively supported.. it sure is not playing nice. I also get a strange dot pattern in the upper left of my screen when shutting down High Sierra with the RX-580. Not so in Mojave where it works without a graphical glitch on shutdown. Just weird stuff but typical Apple issues. LOL.
 
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skizzo

macrumors 6502
Apr 11, 2018
260
83
So I have noticed that audio is fine for me on 10.14.5 (no stuttering) but I do have a rather minor inconvenience with HDMI audio. HDMI audio does not seem to "populate" in the sound window automatically. I have to actually "hot plug" the HDMI cable to have my TV show up as an audio output. I tested this with other TVs I have that I know worked in High Sierra and they all do the same thing. A warm boot, cold boot, or switching OS's, they all make the TV disappear from the audio list. It will not show up again until I hot plug the HDMI cable, or actually unplug and replug back in the TV (this is different than turning it on/off with the remote)

Any one else experiencing this hiccup? The only thing I want to try that I have yet to do is making a clean install of Mojave 10.14.5. I upgraded from HS 10.13.6 so thought a clean install would be next step in troubleshooting
 

panjandrum

macrumors 6502a
Sep 22, 2009
732
919
United States
Just test-upgraded a couple of 4,1s flashed to 5,1s and even very basic audio output is glitching, apparently across any output. On the analog output it's not too bad. Bad enough to make me revert to HS on a machine I personally used? Yes. Bad enough to worry about if you don't really consume much multimedia? Probably not. Over HDMI or DisplayPort it essentially renders audio unusable on both an RX580 and and RX560.

I will probably go ahead and outfit our 4,1s (we have 24 of them) with Mojave compatible video cards to future-proof them so I can upgrade when and if it becomes absolutely necessary. But for now might just leave the machines at HS.
 
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panjandrum

macrumors 6502a
Sep 22, 2009
732
919
United States
The latest OSX releases actually run perfectly (apart from this minor audio issue on some machines) meaning they did not need to make them obsolete and ensure their installer refuses to install the later OSX versions. They could have kept the 4,1 'alive' without any actual effort, which means they had other reasons why they prevented the 4,1 from updating. If there were significant technical reasons why the old Macs would not run the latest OS, that would be a valid reason to declare them obsolete. But we know that's not been true for the last few OSX releases, so the obvious and only conclusion is that they are trying to 'encourage' users to buy newer hardware.

It's been obvious for years that Apple is desperately attempting to force-obsolete our beloved MacPros. They made a great, reliable machine and then new management came in with a much greater focus on short-term profits over long-term profits and loyalty. Big mistake (ask the big-three auto manufacturers how well that went for them when they focused too much on short-term profits beginning in the early/mid 70s).

Here is hoping we can figure out a way to fix this issue that is less extreme that upgrading the processors (as many of us are probably perfectly happy with the CPU performance of these machines).
 

crjackson2134

macrumors 601
Mar 6, 2013
4,847
1,957
Charlotte, NC
While I agree with your post for the most part, I feel like a processor upgrade to solve this issue isn’t unreasonable. Apple isn’t going to fix this issue in a timely manner, if at all.
 
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hatrack71

macrumors newbie
Jan 27, 2018
14
4
Helena, MT
If anything, Apple will try to also disable Westmeres in Mojave somehow next. It's a real pattern with Apple. I like the idea of staying at 10.14.3 with OS updates locked right now but I no longer have access to that version so High Sierra is what I'm using at the moment.
 
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hatrack71

macrumors newbie
Jan 27, 2018
14
4
Helena, MT
While I agree with your post for the most part, I feel like a processor upgrade to solve this issue isn’t unreasonable. Apple isn’t going to fix this issue in a timely manner, if at all.

Well, it wouldn't be unreasonable if it wasn't that stupid delidded design. I don't care how much skill a tech has.. there is a risk of damaging the socket even using the utmost care and caution. Sometimes the cpu sticks to the heatsink, sometimes it stays in the socket just fine. I could easily see one initialy sticking to the heatsink and then falling onto the pins during removal. It seems a little luck is actually needed. LOL. That's why many I suspect... including myself.. don't attempt it as it's a bit dicier than changing a locking door/arm socket cpu. Again though, I realize the 4,1 is long past support so even having it run High Sierra is great for me. I'm happy for now but I will be upgrading the cpus myself later when I am a little braver.. or more desperate. LOL. I've changed at least 100 standard cpus but these ones make me nervous. Is there a trick to insure that cpus either stick to the heatsink or that they stay in the socket? Run the machine before removal or let it sit unplugged for a long while (days) before removal? I'm trying to figure out the magic state for thermal paste. Someone has probably done a few of these and knows a trick or two with the 4,1 cpu swap.
 
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tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,454
13,601
If anything, Apple will try to also disable Westmeres in Mojave somehow next. It's a real pattern with Apple. I like the idea of staying at 10.14.3 with OS updates locked right now but I no longer have access to that version so High Sierra is what I'm using at the moment.
Why Apple will disable a fully supported processor in Mojave?

Westmere and single CPU Nehalem are officially supported with Mojave, since both are used with mid-2010 and mid-2012 Mac Pros. It's only dual CPU Nehalem processors that have this problem and they are not supported since El Capitan. If you remove one processor or use one of them in a single CPU tray, the stuttering disappears.

It's a bug, not an obscure and intentional obsolescence plan from Apple.
 
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