01-16-2009, 03:25 PM

Good Day,

Just obtained a brand new iMac. I used the headphone jack for movies when my roommate went to bed a couple times a week. All of a sudden, when I plug in my headphones OR my external speakers, the audio being played at the moment pauses...then goes right back to playing the audio through the iMac's speakers!!! Man, please tell me I can fix this somehow without having to send in my iMac JUST for this.

ANY HELP? It is NOT the headphones or the speakers I own because they work fine on my friends PC and the headphones on my Sony Receiver...

Any help, like always, is very appreciated!

01-16-2009, 10:00 PM

Several things to check:

1. Check the headphone jack itself. I know it's not easy to see inside but if you shine a light into the jack you should be able to see if the contacts are OK. Left, Right, Ground.

2. Open System Preferences, select Sound. Make sure "headphones" is selected for audio output.

If that doesn't help, the problem may be internal and probably would have to be taken on in to Apple to repair.

Regards.

01-17-2009, 02:18 PM

Oh shoot! I'd be p'd off with that problem! Best thing is to try different headphones and check if something is blocking the port. If not your best bet would be to take it in for repair. Good luck!

02-06-2009, 02:38 PM

I run a Mac lab with 19 iMacs at an educational institution.

Each of these was purchased over the summer of 2008. They run OS 10.5.5, since we require AVID video editing compatibility. Of these, 6 are experiencing the identical problem:

I plug in the headphones and the computer continues to play through its internal speakers. System Preferences shows only one Audio Output path - through the internal speakers - and does not sense that headphones are plugged in.

The ports appear fine. These machines are running the same build and software as all of the other machines in the room.

Any thoughts?

04-09-2009, 01:22 AM

I just got my imac 2.4,had it for a month headphone jack not working, checked 5 headphones, checked all outputs, looked in hole, nada!!!! this is the second Mac that gives me problems within the first 6 months!!! these computers aint cheap, but they seem to be messing up on everyone, this is not fair, now I gotta take time to go to an Apple store, wait, waste time, I read in a site that if you reinstall Leopard it may work but why!! are u serious, I gotta reinstall all my software again, all plug ins, activations, confirmation, pure Apple penetration!!! I'm so upset, and Im not alone on this one, HAS ANYONE FOUND A SOLUTION FOR THIS PROBLEN?, I have an Mbox and it works, I use my headphones out of that but that means I gotta have this Mbpx plugged in now 24/7, thats sad,what if I didnt have an external soundcrad? Cmon Apple

01-03-2010, 02:29 PM

i have the same problem. no matter what i plug in, external speakers are on. now, i took a picture where you can barely see a contact at the bottom, not at the sides.



is that the piece of metal that detects the headphones? maybe, in our case, the male jack isn't making contact with the tiny bit of metal in the rear, so our mac won't detect it.

is there a way to overrun automatic headphone detection and force it to use the integrated output socket rather than the integrated speakers?