The $ 1,799 Studio Display has serious audio issues, and Apple knows it
Among the features that Apple put the spotlight on when it presented its Studio Display in March, there is also a respectable audio sector with three microphones and six speakers with spatial audio. A remarkable endowment, at least on paper: in practice, however, it is proving to be problematic.
Users have noticed it for some time, but an official replica has not yet arrived from Cupertino. According to MacRumorshowever, Apple would have recognized internally that there are audio-related problems of the Studio Displayas evidenced by a note on the subject sent to authorized service providers.
But what’s the trouble, exactly, and how widespread is it? The audio bug causes the sudden interruption of sound reproduction, which then becomes unreliable and intermittent. In the video below, for example, we see how initially the playback through the audio system of the MacBook Pro connected to the Studio Display does not show any problems: however, when the user sets the monitor as output, in a few seconds the music stops abruptly, never to return.
Since yesterday my Studio Display will only play audio for a few seconds and then it stops. Audio playback works fine on the MacBook Pro that’s connected to the display. Not sure if it’s hardware or software related. I’m running the Ventura beta.
Anyone seeing something similar? pic.twitter.com/u4yO1bFubq
– Simon B. Støvring (@simonbs) July 28, 2022
The amount of Twitter flagging is not an accurate measure of the scale of the problem, but it sure shows us that hundreds of users are struggling with the same problems. And certainly the situation is making noise since si talks about a particularly expensive product – on our market the starting price is 1,799 euros – from which it is natural to expect top characteristics and an experience free of friction and problems.
At the moment, however, there is no permanent solution, but there is only (and not in all cases) the possibility of temporarily resolving the malfunction with a restart of the monitor – there are those who manage to unplug it overnight. We have to wait, therefore, for Cupertino to gear up to find a solution, coming out into the open even on a public level.
It is not the first time that Studio Display has disappointed those who have bought it. In fact, already in the first weeks after the launch, another of the strengths of the Apple monitor had turned out to be an element of weakness, with the ultra wide-angle webcam with automatic framing that promised sparks and instead disappointed because of poor software optimization, forcing Cupertino to release new firmware to improve performance.
