Fix Guide: Sequoia Logic Pro Core Audio Spike Fix

Symptom: Logic Pro or Ableton Live experiences sudden "System Overload" errors or CPU spikes on macOS Sequoia, even on simple projects, often accompanied by a "Core Audio" error message.

Why this happens

This is frequently caused by a conflict between Sequoia's audioauhost process and the coreaudiod daemon. macOS Sequoia has introduced new energy-saving cores (E-cores) scheduling logic that sometimes incorrectly moves the heavy lifting of audio processing to the slower cores. Additionally, the powerd daemon might be throttling the CPU too aggressively during audio playback to save battery.

Recommended Troubleshooting Tool

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Fix 1: Restart the Core Audio Daemon

The most direct way to fix a frozen or spiking audio engine is to kill the daemon and let it restart fresh.

# Kill the core audio daemon (it will auto-restart)
sudo killall -9 coreaudiod

Fix 2: Disable Low Power Mode for Audio

Even if you are on AC power, Sequoia's "Low Power Mode" settings can sometimes linger in the background.

# Force the system to stay in a high-performance state
sudo pmset -a lowpowermode 0

Fix 3: Reset Logic Pro's Control Surface Cache

Corrupted cache files for MIDI controllers can cause the audioauhost to hang while waiting for a response.

# Remove the control surface preferences
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.logic.pro.cs

Recommended Tool: CleanMyMac

Audio production generates massive amounts of temporary cache files and Audio Unit (AU) validation logs. CleanMyMac’s "System Junk" tool is excellent at cleaning out these "broken preferences" and old AU caches that can cause Core Audio to spike or crash Logic Pro.