Apple never addressed the Sound and USB failures in Thunderbolt Displays.

I've been having a problem with the audio on my Thunderbolt display. It will drop out without warning, with all knowledge of the Display disappearing from my Mac mini (M1 running ). Anything connected to the Display's USB hub also stops working. (Weirdly, you can get power through the hub if you disconnect it from the Mac.

Complaints about this problem go back to 2012, and Apple discontinued them in 2016 with no solution or even an acknowledgment of the problem by Apple. They simply posted an weird 'answer' that had nothing to do the problem. User-generated solutions offered temporary relief, but not a solution.

Some suggested the problem was the USB hub inside the display, which also provides the audio(?). It doesn't seem to affect the thunderbolt passthrough to the storage array also connected. It seems like the USB hardware overheats (because Apple is awesome at cooling) and needs to be turned off and allowed to cool down, but that's just a hunch. I'll have to use a separate audio solution, but if there is an actual solution out there I would love to hear about it.