USB speakers keep waking Mac

[steve217]

My USB speakers - Klipsch R-51PM’s - are apparently the cause of my M1 Mac Mini failing to sleep.

I fingered the speakers as the waking villians by removing every device from my machine one by one and putting the Mac to sleep. I can still use the speakers via a stereo cable, but I would prefer to connect via USB.

Is there a way to find/disable a USB-Input device in MacOS as described in this Windows-centric post?

R-15PM prevent PC's display to go to sleep

I have a pair of R-15PM connected to my Windows 10 via USB, it's preventing my Windows's to let display to go to sleep. If I turn the speaker off, my display will go into sleep mode. Here's what I've tried so far from googling for hours: I've ran "powercfg -requests" and there's nothing there I'v...

community.klipsch.com

 

[swrobel]

I had all sorts of problems with my Klipsch speakers when they were connected over USB. I just broke down and went to an analog cable and all has been well.

 

[steve217]

I had all sorts of problems with my Klipsch speakers when they were connected over USB. I just broke down and went to an analog cable and all has been well.

That's been my recourse too, an analog cable.

Pity. Not that I have the ears for lossless, but I do like the idea of that clean, high bandwidth connection for audio.

 

[swrobel]

I agree, it's completely silly to buy USB speakers and then have them be unusable over USB, but at least there's a fallback. In fact, I forgot about that whole ordeal until I came across your post. It sounds the same in the end, at least to my ears

 

[steve217]

One interesting tidbit to this USB connection/sleep issue is that the speakers worked fine with a 2018 Mac Mini.

*Sigh* Another bugfix to hope for in the next macOS release.

 

[steve217]

@swrobel - Long time since this thread was started, but I finally found a cure for the speakers waking the Mac by turning off the power saving features on the speakers.


To disable power saving on the Klipsch:

1. Ensure the speakers are set to a non-Bluetooth source (phono, analog, digital, or USB).
2. Press and hold the Volume/Source knob on the back of the main speaker.
3. While holding the knob, press the Subwoofer volume (up or down) button on the remote once, then release the Volume/Source knob. The front LED will start blinking.
4. Press the Volume/Source knob repeatedly until the front LED turns purple.

5. Once the LED is purple, press the Subwoofer Reset button once to confirm the setting. The LED should stop flashing and return to the original source indicator.

Although the analog cable prevented the speakers from waking the Mac, the speakers themselves would go into sleep mode even while I was using the Mac ... and that got old.

 

[MacGizmo]

Bluetooth and USB devices are notoriously responsible for sleep issues on the Mac. One reason I wish the Apple Studio Display had an On/Off button.

 

[steve217]

@MacGizmo - I agree and wish that we could ignore wake events from specific USB devices in macOS.

 

[Fishrrman]

Just wondering...
Do the USB speakers in question have their own on/off button?
If so, what happens if you TURN OFF the speakers (assuming you're going to be away for a while, or at night) ???

I'm thinking that doing this will cause the USB speaker connection to "drop" from the USB bus, and not "trouble it" again until you turn them back on...

 

[steve217]

I don't remember what powering off the speakers did about waking the Mac, and after 4 years of this issue, I'm not about to turn off the power-saving feature to find out.

I remember that I would leave the speaker in Aux mode - connected to the Mac via the headphone jack. The problem there was that the speakers would go to sleep whether the Mac was awake or not. Sound would just drop and I would have to grab the remote and wake the speakers.

And that got old. Any other connection option was sub-optimal; Bluetooth had too much lag, USB would wake the Mac.

I just don't understand the scenario whereby an output-only USB device would need to wake the computer. This was also only a macOS issue. I had no problem with these speakers and Windows 10 and Linux.