Learn how to solve intermittent speaker issues with your Studio Display, ranging from garbled audio to distorted sound to choppy playback and beyond.
Given the Studio Display costs $1,599, it’s reasonable to expect flawless performance. Early adopters were contented with teething problems like webcam hiccups.
Similarly, in some unfortunate situations, your Apple Studio Display may suffer from problems like mangled or garbled audio, distorted audio, sound cutting out on a whim, choppy playback, sound failing, broken audio recording functionality, and so forth.
Over time, the problem may grow worse up to the point where apps or websites that output audio, such as YouTube and Apple Music, may freeze.
Apple made a lot of noise about the fact that the Studio Display is equipped with a six-speaker system with spatial audio support, so it’s obvious to get angry if you encounter sound issues.
Thankfully, these speaker problems with the display don’t seem to have anything to do with hardware, so you can fix them with some easy steps.
1. Restart your Apple Studio Display
You may not think of restarting your Apple monitor because the Studio Display doesn’t have a power button, nor is there any kind of software control available to restart the accessory. So, use the main wall power button to power-cycle your Studio Display. In other words, turn off your Studio Display using the main switch, wait for a minute, and turn it back on.
Rebooting reloads the operating system and clears the memory, which often alleviates software-based problems. It may seem weird to reboot a display, but that’s a good tip to follow.
Furthermore, to fix other software-rooted problems with the speakers, microphone, and other Studio Display components, simply disconnect the Studio Display plug from the power socket, wait a few seconds when the screen goes blank, unplug any accessories or devices connected to it, and then plug the device back into power.
Don’t panic if the screen doesn’t immediately turn on. Just like your iPhone doesn’t instantly become available after being turned on, the Studio Display needs some time to restart and become available again.
2. Update your Studio Display
The Studio Display has the A13 Bionic chip (same as iPhone 11) and has an operating system of its own. In a nutshell, it’s a mini-computer disguised as a display. And, like with all computers, your Apple monitor works better if restarted once a week or so and updated to the latest software version.
So in case restarting doesn’t solve the problem for good, and it returns after a couple of days, make sure you update your Studio Display firmware to the latest build.
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