HDMI Audio Playback Destroys Macbook Performance

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Level 1

4 points

HDMI Audio Playback Destroys Macbook Performance

Device: Macbook Pro 2021, M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, macOS Sonoma 14.4

Context: Watching video stream on Chrome, I connect HDMI cable to TV, stream begins buffering aggressively as soon as audio connects.

Stream works perfect before I connect.

It still works after I use TV as mirror display using HDMI.

Once I go to macOS audio settings and select HDMI Audio as output/playback the stream comes to a standstill.

I've tried multiple HDMI cables and can reproduce issue consistently by switching playback device.
Activity Monitor shows no significant spike in CPU, memory, or disk. Somewhat of a jump in energy impact.

Please advise, HDMI audio is unusable.

MacBook Pro (2021)

Posted on May 14, 2024 7:59 PM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

83,321 points

May 18, 2024 11:59 AM in response to djole103

Use the Audio Midi Setup utility to adjust audio to 16bit 44.1 kHz. Short of your audio device having more than two speakers, that's the maximum audio you will have. Digital audio interface support resets to a higher audio frequency on many system updates, and the Audio Midi Setup utility needs to be fixed for those.

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