Reader's tip: iMac restarts by itself - sound siphon seems to be the cause

Today I got an email from my reader Matthias, who says he had been struggling with an extremely "annoying" problem with the iMac for at least two weeks. "Had" because he was able to solve it himself in the meantime, but it really cost him a lot of time. For this reason, he would like to pass the information on to other affected persons.

The current version of Sound Siphon paralyzes the iMac after the last system update.

The problem: iMac restarts and programs crash

As Matthias describes it, his iMac has had a number of problems since the last macOS update, which can be found here in a short list:

• The iMac unexpectedly restarts by itself without being instructed to do so.
• Any program often crashes.
• It took an extremely long time to wake up from hibernation and sometimes the iMac had to be hard reset off and then on again.

The cause: Sound siphon from Static Z

After a good two weeks, Matthias was finally able to localize the problem. He looked through the system log with the "Console" app in the "Utilities" folder.

While looking through the logs, he noticed that Sound Siphon was running a process practically every second. He sent me some excerpts from the logs so that you can see which entries appeared there.

an 13 12:51:58 imac com.staticz.audio.soundsiphon.player [64]: Sound Siphon: Prefs have changed onTimer: 1 Jan 13 12:51:58 imac com.staticz.audio.soundsiphon.player [64] : string length: 189 Jan 13 12:51:58 imac com.staticz.audio.soundsiphon.player [64]: string: AppleUSBAudioEngine: Burr-Brown from TI: USB audio CODEC: 400000: 1 Jan 13 12:52:03 imac com.staticz.audio.soundsiphon.player [64]: Sound Siphon: Prefs have changed onTimer: 1 Jan 13 12:52:03 imac com.staticz.audio.soundsiphon.player [64]: string length: 189 Jan 13 12:52:03 imac com.staticz.audio.soundsiphon.player [64]: string: AppleUSBAudioEngine: Burr-Brown from TI: USB audio CODEC: 400000: 1 Jan 13 12:52:08 imac com.staticz.audio. soundsiphon.player [64]: Sound Siphon: Prefs have changed onTimer: 1

Jan 13 13:04:54 imac kcm [7477]: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: Setting timer interval to 0 requests a 1ns timer, did you mean FOREVER (a one-shot timer) ?; set a breakpoint on _dispatch_bug_deprecated to debug Jan 13 13:04:59 imac com.staticz.audio.soundsiphon.player [64]: Sound siphon: Prefs have changed onTimer: 1 Jan 13 13:04:59 imac com.staticz.audio .soundsiphon.player [64]: StartAudioPlayback Jan 13 13:04:59 imac com.staticz.audio.soundsiphon.player [64]: string length: 108 Jan 13 13:04:59 imac com.staticz.audio.soundsiphon. player [64]: string: com.staticz.audio.soundsiphon.master Jan 13 13:05:03 imac com.staticz.audio.soundsiphon.player [64]: Sound Siphon: Prefs have changed onTimer: 1

Sound siphon is a Mac audio recording app created by the software forge Static Z is being developed. It is intended to record conversations via FaceTime, Skype or WhatsApp. It can also be used for podcasting and for sending in-game audio mixed with speech via the microphone.

Obviously, the app - at least in the current version 3 - seems to have problems with macOS Mojave, because after uninstalling the software, the iMac ran clean again and quickly came back from sleep. The random program crashes are also a thing of the past.

Uninstalling the Sound Siphon

The complete deinstallation of the software can be accomplished with a special stand-alone uninstaller, which is called via the support forum the developer finds.

Alternatively, you can solve it yourself using the software:

1. Open the sound siphon.
2. Call up settings or preferences.
3. In the "Support" area, select "Uninstall Sound Siphon".

Thanks to Matthias for the support! I am sure there are other readers who have this problem and will appreciate this help in solving it.

Jen Kleinholz( Founder & Sir Apfelot )

Jens has been running the blog since 2012. He appears as Sir Apfelot for his readers and helps them with problems of a technical nature. In his free time he drives electric unicycles, takes photos (preferably with his iPhone, of course), climbs around in the Hessian mountains or hikes with the family. His articles deal with Apple products, news from the world of drones or solutions for current bugs.