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Studio Display XDR Impressions

thenewepic said:
correct me if I'm wrong but you have replied to this message:

This message is about a kernel panic. So the answer to your question: we all are talking.
Click to expand...
You’re welcome to speak for yourself, but you can’t speak for everyone. That’s something you learn in elementary school. I don’t see a kernel panic here. Besides, I described a general behavior between the monitor and the GPU, which also applies to Windows and Linux, among others. So now it’s your turn!
 
Apple engineering have opened a case although as before, its amazing how frustrating it can be when you start to talk to first line support at any company.

Whatever script they're following or prompts they get, it took a long time to get them to understand there's two monitors instead of one and even to realise what an ASD XDR was.

  • Anyway, I have their tool to gather logs post crash/kernel panic. Plan is to leave them connected as-is (daisy-chained), record crash logs.
  • Then once that happens, connect them direct to the Mac and repeat.
  • Then, they want me to just connect one and a non-Apple monitor and do the same.
No mention about changing refresh rate to adaptive or down to 60Hz... And interestingly, after your Mac crashes and you get the option to send the logs to Apple, there's apparently no way for their support teams to reference those back to the serial number of a Mac if you then raise a support ticket with them.

Anyway, engineering guys were interested in these parts of the report in particular.
  • DCPEXT2 PANIC
  • AppleDCP
  • power_down_M3: auto_mode_change failed
  • RTKit
  • auto_mode_change failed with 0x8000000f
 
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ascender said:
Apple engineering have opened a case although as before, its amazing how frustrating it can be when you start to talk to first line support at any company.

Whatever script they're following or prompts they get, it took a long time to get them to understand there's two monitors instead of one and even to realise what an ASD XDR was.

  • Anyway, I have their tool to gather logs post crash/kernel panic. Plan is to leave them connected as-is (daisy-chained), record crash logs.
  • Then once that happens, connect them direct to the Mac and repeat.
  • Then, they want me to just connect one and a non-Apple monitor and do the same.
No mention about changing refresh rate to adaptive or down to 60Hz... And interestingly, after your Mac crashes and you get the option to send the logs to Apple, there's apparently no way for their support teams to reference those back to the serial number of a Mac if you then raise a support ticket with them.

Anyway, engineering guys were interested in these parts of the report in particular.
  • DCPEXT2 PANIC
  • AppleDCP
  • power_down_M3: auto_mode_change failed
  • RTKit
  • auto_mode_change failed with 0x8000000f
Click to expand...
Who knows, maybe you have in your hands a possible solution to this problem!
 
One reason I upgraded from the M1-series of MacBook Pro to the M4 was for Thunderbolt 5 and future high-refresh HiDPI displays. Initially I was disappointed like many people that the Studio Display XDR came only in 5K 27", but after watching this thread and reading countless reviews/videos I finally upgraded for no good reason.

I certainly did NOT need to, but I must admit that I love this display. It's crisp and sharp, I can finally view the HDR in my photos, and 120hz makes it a much better fit with my MacBook Pro. It's not as dramatic as the jump to Retina, but the display just feels nicer.

I also must admit that getting the tilt and height adjustable stand was a major component. I aways kicked myself for only getting the tilt adjustment on my old display. The price makes it an impractical purchase for someone like me, but I'm overly very pleased with it.

I upgraded to macOS 26.5 just for this display and fortunately no crashes thus far.
 
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New nvidia driver is out to fix the NV_failsafe resolution problem with Apple XDR display. I haven’t tried it yet, hopefully it works.
 
MikhailT said:
New nvidia driver is out to fix the NV_failsafe resolution problem with Apple XDR display. I haven’t tried it yet, hopefully it works.
Click to expand...

It works for me on a 4090: 5k at 120Hz becomes available as resolution. By default it starts at 480p but you can set it in windows settings.

It loses HDR support though, which worked in the earlier drivers.
 
alfogator said:
It works for me on a 4090: 5k at 120Hz becomes available as resolution. By default it starts at 480p but you can set it in windows settings.

It loses HDR support though, which worked in the earlier drivers.
Click to expand...
Yep, finally, smooth like butter. Windows' not even that good with HDR and I switch to 4k for gaming in HDR but that didn't work either.
1780033194897.png


It might be because it is still acting like a 5k signal in 4k. I suspect with DSC enabled, HDR is too much; but we should be able to downrate the signal to 4k somehow.

1780033370269.png
 
Hope some of you can help. I got the new XDR this week, and I’m getting heavy stuttering when vertical scrolling using any app. Initially I thought it was an app I had installed called “monitor control”. I uninstalled it, rebooted and the issue went away, but then came back. The issue is present in Safe Mode too. It doesn’t matter if the display is set to 120hz or adaptive refresh rate, the scrolling stutters. It doesn’t do this on 60hz.

I’m using the latest MacBook Pro with m5 pro chip. I can’t work out why the scrolling was fine for literally hours (smooth 120hz scrolling) and then the issue returned.

I’ve also noticed if I reboot the Mac, scrolling is fine for a few seconds, but then begins to stutter and the issue doesn’t go away.

The XDR is running the last firmware. Tahoe is up to date etc.

Is anyone else having this issue?
 
@Macintosh101
It sounds like Monitor Control is still having an effect.
I don't think it has a Reset All Display System Settings button like Better Display has to remove the controls that have been applied to the display, by the app on the Mac.

So you (most likely) need to have quit all its active controls before uninstalling it.
When using BD the Reset button is there to do that.

Just uninstalling MC might be leaving the monitor with controls still applied, which would continue to alter the monitors performance.

Also there may be left over preference files in the MacOS libraries?

To quote Google - no idea if this is correct:
"Look for the following folders and delete any items related to MonitorControl:
  • ~/Library/Preferences/me.guillaumeb.MonitorControl.plist
  • ~/Library/Containers/ (Look for the app's bundle ID)
  • ~/Library/Application Support/MonitorControl"
 
Last edited:
PaulD-UK said:
@Macintosh101
It sounds like Monitor Control is still having an effect.
I don't think it has a Reset All Display System Settings button like Better Display has to remove the controls that have been applied to the display, by the app on the Mac.

So you (most likely) need to have quit all its active controls before uninstalling it.
When using BD the Reset button is there to do that.

Just uninstalling MC might be leaving the monitor with controls still applied, which would continue to alter the monitors performance.

Also there may be left over preference files in the MacOS libraries?

To quote Google - no idea if this is correct:
"Look for the following folders and delete any items related to MonitorControl:
  • ~/Library/Preferences/me.guillaumeb.MonitorControl.plist
  • ~/Library/Containers/ (Look for the app's bundle ID)
  • ~/Library/Application Support/MonitorControl"
Click to expand...
Thanks for this. I tried all that and rebooted, but the issue still remains. I'm thinking it's related to something else, but I've no idea what.

Does anyone have any ideas?
 
Macintosh101 said:
Thanks for this. I tried all that and rebooted, but the issue still remains. I'm thinking it's related to something else, but I've no idea what.

Does anyone have any ideas?
Click to expand...
For anyone wondering, the issue persisted. I even tried a clean install on my m5 MacBook Pro and the issue was persistent, including in safe mode. I'm going to return it as the display seems defective.
 
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Am I the only one to find the sound quality of the Studio Display XDR very subpar? It feel boxy (as if played from within a tin can) and lost in it's muddy bass (like a pair of Beats...) compared to my MBP 14" M3Max crystal clear (though lacking a little bass compared to it's 16" brother of course).
Using SoundSource, even creating a manual EQ to turn the bass down still keeps that tin-can feeling.

I've being trying to understand how that screen exposes itself to the system. MacOS's system report > audio section reports it as 8 channel. "Audio MIDI Setup.app" utility also shows the device as an 8 channel device but only a compound"primary" slider can be changed by the user, while none of the 8 channels can be changed separately.

Help me understand please
 
The speakers in Studio Display inherit the downward firing mechanism from iMacs, this needs reflection to the desk to bounce back to ears, by nature it is at a disadvantage compared to the (somewhat) direct firing speakers in the MacBook Pros. While the accuracy of bass frequency is not as affected by being directional or not, the "muddiness" you hear probably extends quite far into the mids which is not ideal when bounced.

As for why Audio MIDI reports them being 8-channel, I suspected it is because of the spatial audio capability. The system needs to see this audio output as a surround setup for audio streams such as from Apple TV app to recognize and provide the spatial audio feed. But then I just checked on MBP which also does spatial audio, but Audio MIDI treats the speakers as 2 channel as normal. So I don't know why the Studio Display is treated differently.
 
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