Latest Mac Pros show strange performance hits and heat problems when using audio
UPDATE February 11: Apple has posted a kernel extension fix to address this problem.
Here’s a weird one: Apple’s newest Mac Pro computers, the most powerful they’ve ever produced, were introduced early and late in 2009. But they also appear to have a software bug that significantly increases generated heat and reduces performance when using nearly any part of the audio subsystem—including, in some instances, simply keeping a FireWire or USB audio interface plugged in.
The problem doesn’t appear on the same machines when they run another operating system (such as when booted into Windows), indicating that it is probably a low-level driver issue with Mac OS X. Developer experiments with hacking some power management kernel extensions support that. Older Mac Pro systems are not affected.
Apple should be able to fix this with a future software update, but if your brand-new multi-thousand-dollar Mac Pro isn’t performing as well as you expect when working with audio, now you know why it might be so.
2 comments February 3rd, 2010 by Derek
(AAC audio)