A growing number of Studio Display owners have reported speaker problems with their $1599 display. Happily, the issue is a software problem, not hardware. Unfortunately, a fix is not as yet available.
Apple has acknowledged the issue and is likely working on a fix that will appear as part of a future update to the display’s software.
9to5Mac reports that users that are experiencing the problem say that audio plays for a bit and then cuts out. Some users say they experience ‘choppy’ audio before it goes completely out.
“For the last month or so, the speakers on my Studio Display have been broken. Whenever I start playing music (or any other audio), it works for a few seconds and then cuts out.”
“Audio gets choppy and eventually just cuts out completely. Rebooting the Mac doesn’t help. You literally have to power cycle the entire Studio Display(s). Happens about every 5-6 weeks for me it seems.”
“The audio on my Studio Display fails intermittently. The only way I can get it to work again is to unplug the display overnight. That resets the display and resolves the problem temporarily. Until the next time.”
Affected users say it only happens when playing through the monitor speakers.
A temporary fix is to power-cycle the monitor, which is a less than desirable solution.
After hours with Apple support and trying all kind of things to isolate the issue, it occurred to me that we did EVERYTHING except restart/reboot the display itself. because it has no power button and no software control to restart it, the only way to do it is to unplug it from the power source, wait at least 1 full minute and plug it back in. Of course it immediately solved all the issues.
MacRumors has shared a memo to authorized service providers which advises a temporary fix of disconnecting the monitor from power and other devices for ten seconds, then powering-up again. Users indicate that the temporary fix works for anything from days to weeks.