MacOS – Why is the coreaudiod daemon using 5% or more CPU

itunesmacos

Every time I listen to music on iTunes or VLC, I notice that the process coreaudiod causes an unusually high CPU usage (5% or more).

Are you having the same issue? What's the reason for such a high CPU usage?

  • Recent OS X updates have not changed this observation. Restarting (or killing the process so it respawns) doesn't fix the problem. After a couple of seconds, CPU usage of coreaudiod goes above 5% again.

  • It's important to note that using line out makes the problem go away and coreaudiod's CPU usage goes down to 1%-2%.

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Best Answer

The high CPU usage of coreaudiod is due to the ambient noise reduction software working (surprisingly, even when the built-in microphone is not in use).

Go to System Preferences > Sound > Input and uncheck the Use ambient noise reduction box.

Then, either reboot or run this one-liner to reload coreaudiod, and you should see coreaudiod CPU usage drop to 1% or less.