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Every time I listen to music on iTunes or VLC, I notice that the process coreaudiod causes an unusually high CPU usage (5% or more).

Are you having the same issue? What's the reason for such a high CPU usage?

  • Recent OS X updates have not changed this observation. Restarting (or killing the process so it respawns) doesn't fix the problem. After a couple of seconds, CPU usage of coreaudiod goes above 5% again.

  • It's important to note that using line out makes the problem go away and coreaudiod's CPU usage goes down to 1%-2%.

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Haytham Elkhoja
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  • seems to be a reported issue. http://mvgfr-geek.blogspot.com/2011/02/coreaudiod-using-too-much-cpu.html Also issues with coreaudiod locking up/glitching http://blog.erikphansen.com/weird-os-10-7-lion-audiovideo-problems – lemonginger Sep 13 '11 at 14:59
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    yeah, i read those, none of the *fixes* fixed the issue... – Haytham Elkhoja Sep 13 '11 at 16:19
  • If you are using headphones, does the usage drop? – lemonginger Sep 13 '11 at 17:18
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    Yes, how weird is that? – Haytham Elkhoja Sep 15 '11 at 05:49
  • I only find another dude with the same problem: http://mvgfr-geek.blogspot.com/2011/02/coreaudiod-using-too-much-cpu.html – Haytham Elkhoja Sep 15 '11 at 06:01
  • What encoding scheme and bitrate is the smallest that can cause this? Are you using sound enhancer, crossfade, equalization or mixing the balance in any way? What CPU/GPU combination is being used? What hardware model (some have audio boards...)... It might be normal, it might be something you can change depending on the details. – bmike Oct 14 '11 at 16:47
  • Hi, No the problem goes away as soon as i plug in earphones... and i'm not using crossfade/equalization/sound enhancer, it's a normal iTunes installation. It was not this way in Snow Leopard. Apple did NOT fix the coreaudiod issue in 10.7.2 – Haytham Elkhoja Oct 18 '11 at 13:56
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    I'm having the same issue. Mac OS X 10.7.2; coreaudiod is using 8% CPU constantly. Issue goes away when I plug in the headphones. 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo MBP. I've read somewhere that Parallels could be under suspicion - anybody here using Parallels? – Scott Oct 30 '11 at 18:46
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    I experience the same too when I play through the speakers, I'll try the headphones. Thanks for sharing the tip, Haytham. – Global nomad Nov 20 '11 at 09:13
  • I wonder if this could be CPU required to perform some sort of DSP for the built-in speakers. A filter and clipping perhaps? – sbooth Jan 20 '12 at 02:33
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    This problem still persists in 10.7.3. When listening to the radio, the coreaudiod is up at 10%! – gentmatt Feb 18 '12 at 09:00
  • Problem still persists in 10.8 GM – Haytham Elkhoja Jul 24 '12 at 16:57
  • Experiencing this problem on brand new MBP 2015 13". Usually hovers around 11% while muted, nothing playing or plugged in. foo bar's answer brought it down to 8%. Was happening with very little software installed. – Zenexer Aug 26 '15 at 22:42
  • My coreaudiod is worse https://puu.sh/EsjqG/8e0cfffb22.png – Dev Oct 14 '19 at 02:38
  • I have this problem too (amongst many others). No option to turn off ambient reduction, coreaudiod is hovering at about 20% of cpu, very new MacBook Pro 2019. It's hilarious that this is a 10 year-old problem. This is my first Mac I have ever purchased, and I will never buy Apple's garbage again. – sovemp Dec 16 '20 at 00:28

12 Answers12

31

The high CPU usage of coreaudiod is due to the ambient noise reduction software working (surprisingly, even when the built-in microphone is not in use).

Go to System Preferences > Sound > Input and uncheck the Use ambient noise reduction box.

Then, either reboot or run this one-liner to reload coreaudiod, and you should see coreaudiod CPU usage drop to 1% or less.

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foo bar
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  • Dropped from 11% to 8% while audio is muted and nothing is playing. (2015 MBP 13") – Zenexer Aug 26 '15 at 22:41
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    After changing the setting, I also had to run "sudo killall coreaudiod" to actually get the CPU utilization to drop. I imagine rebooting would have accomplished the same thing as well. – DrFriedParts Jun 19 '16 at 23:56
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    Note that running `sudo killall coreaudiod` will make it so that you have no sound at all until you either reboot or properly reload coreaudiod. [This one-liner](http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/246514/99817) should do the trick if you don't want to reboot. – Dave Yarwood Jan 22 '17 at 18:47
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    Is this setting removed in Big Sur? I can't find it. – d-b Aug 22 '21 at 14:30
  • In my case, I turned on "Ask siri" in a noisy environment, it will perform noise cancellation in realtime in case listen your "hey, siri" command. So just turn off "Ask siri" and do [this on-liner] showed upper – A.Chan Jul 08 '22 at 06:18
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Certain applications appear to be triggering this problem when interacting with the microphone. The problem goes away a minute or two after the problem applications are closed.

Problem applications

These applications need to be restarted in order to restore normal CPU usage. They do not release their hold on the microphone properly.

  • HipChat after first time camera/mic are used, such as when opening preferences (see HipChat forums)
  • Boom by Global Delight Technologies (reference)--as far as I can tell, this shouldn't be using the microphone

Background applications

These applications could be running in the background while using your microphone.

  • Any VoIP application such as Skype or FaceTime
  • Adobe Flash in a web browser
  • Virtualization software such as VMware, VirtualBox, or Parallels. These will likely "listen" to your microphone whenever you have a virtual machine running, even if that virtual machine doesn't seem to be using the microphone at the moment. Most virtualization software allows you to disable audio hardware virtualization, which should solve this, although some may not be granular enough to disable the microphone without also disabling the speakers.
  • Specialized audio software such as that developed by Akai Pro (example report for EIE Pro with Logic X)
  • Voice search/recognition software, including Google Chrome's "Ok Google" voice search capability (reported as partially fixed by Chrome developers: Chrome will stop listening when switching users)
Zenexer
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    I also uninstalled Loopback's ACM or whatever its helper utility is, which kicked a restart of `coreaudiod`, and that brought it's CPU usage down to 0.0 (was 5.0-8.0 constantly). If you're not actively using Loopback, it seems like a good idea to uninstall its helper. – geerlingguy May 12 '20 at 14:39
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    This helped me: my application was Cisco Webex Teams, and the secret setting is in "Devices > Discover Devices > Use Ultrasound". Why this is on by default is beyond me – Colin Bradley May 27 '20 at 08:05
  • In my case it was the telegram app – randomcontrol Jul 10 '20 at 20:43
  • In my case it was Google Duo. Looks like even leaving the webpage open after a call will cause `coreaudiod` to use ~10% CPU. – Patrick Nov 22 '21 at 18:52
  • Had identified my issue was caused by Remote Desktop sessions and the "Play sound" on "my device" option being set. Setting to never reduced coreaudiod from 12-14% to ~0%! – Tasos Zervos Nov 26 '21 at 11:02
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A tab in google chrome running WhatsApp keeps the system awake; in particular, coreaudiod is running. See https://webdiary.com/tag/coreaudiod/

B. Salz
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  • Welcome to Ask Different! This does not provide an answer to the question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post once you have sufficient [reputation](http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/whats-reputation). If you have a new question, please ask it by clicking the [Ask Question](http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/ask) button. Include a link to this question if it helps provide context. – Tetsujin Apr 16 '16 at 08:48
  • This was indeed wat was causing coreaudiod to eat up 8% cpu continuously on my mac. After closing the tab, the cpu usage immediately disappeared. – Friek May 19 '16 at 20:53
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This is indeed due to Google Chrome browser continuously using the microphone to listen for the hotword 'OK Google'. While unchecking noise reduction in the system audio preferences will decrease CPU usage (in my case from 12% to 8% coreaudiod) this does not fix the underlying issue.

To completely resolve the issue open Google Chrome -> Settings -> Search -> and disable 'Enable "OK Google" to start a voice search'.

My coreaudiod CPU usage went from 12% to zero.

assfrm9
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    Chrome's preferences' layout has changed, do you know where this setting is now? – d-b Aug 22 '21 at 14:31
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This appears to be a know issue, and hopefully will be fixed in an update in the future. For now though, there are one or two things you could try (it goes without saying that make sure all software is updated to its highest stable version)

  • First of all, restart your computer.
  • Second of all, install Onyx. Install and open, and click on the 'Cleaning' tab. Under that, make sure, on the 'System' section, that the 'Audio Components' option is checked. Click execute, and let it do it's thing.
  • Then open Disk Utility, select your startup volume, and repair all disk permissions. Let it run, then close all apps and restart again.

I hope this helps relieve the problem in some way, but I cannot guarantee it, having not been afflicted with it myself, however this is the course of action I take whenever my CPU usage is higher than I would expect it to be due to a process.

Ali
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Seems like creating the folder Library/Preferences/Audio worked for at least some people. Have you tried it?

Shane
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  • The user just copied `/Library/Preferences/Audio/` from another computer. I also had the issue on my previous Mac though. If it worked for someone, can you upload the plist files somewhere? – Lri Dec 31 '12 at 10:18
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I just had the same issue on 10.8.4.

Quitting Boom.app seems to have resolved it for me.

I think Boom uses similar technology as AirFoil, so it might be worth quitting or uninstalling anything that somehow captures and modifies or redirects the audio-stream.

Perhaps the app afflicting you saves state per output device, and it's state for your built-in speakers is borked somehow.

Gilimanjaro
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  • The poster did not indicate that he's using any third-party plugins or applications, other than VLC. – tubedogg Sep 03 '13 at 21:13
  • I tried muting BoomDevice (under System Preferences->Sound) in both the Output and Input device lists, and my CPU usage for coreaudiod immediately dropped. – Sean the Bean Mar 19 '14 at 19:49
  • Interestingly, I uninstalled Boom a long time ago, but BoomDevice is still installed.. I'll have to fix that. – Sean the Bean Mar 19 '14 at 19:50
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Disabling "Google Voice Search Hotword (Beta)" extension in Google Chrome helped... OS X 10.9.1 Mavericks

Marco
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Here in 2020, I had a couple of clones of iOS Simulator running an (otherwise idle) app. coreaudio was taking about 18% CPU, and quitting the Simulator dropped it to zero.

lyricsboy
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This could be audio plugins that run under core audio.

gentmatt
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  • While this seems reasonable at first, it does not explain why "plugging in earphones or external speakers makes the problem go away". – gentmatt Jan 24 '13 at 12:37
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I found that killing Flash fixed the problem for me.

I rebooted yesterday to see if that would fix the problem, but by this afternoon, coreaudiod had accumulated 6 hours of CPU time. I have not used any audio apps (VLC, iTunes, etc.).

I turned off "ambient noise reduction" and there was no impact - still at 8-10% CPU. I noticed Flash running with a much lower CPU (~1%), but I did not realize that I was visiting any Flash-based websites. I killed Flash, and coreaudiod disappeared from Activity Monitor. When I re-enabled "ambient noise reduction" there was no impact - coreaudiod still gone. (This all on OS X 10.9.)

Jawa
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Chris Hull
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Some people claim this helps:

$ sudo launchctl unload /system/library/launchdaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist
$ sudo rm -r /Library/Preferences/Audio/
$ sudo mkdir /Library/Preferences/Audio
$ sudo chown -R _coreaudiod:admin /Library/Preferences/Audio
$ sudo launchctl load /system/library/launchdaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist

For me it turned out the cause was this HipChat issue.

mb21
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