Speakers aren't working, headphone jack is

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my speakers are not working, but my headphone jack is..showing red light in jack...have tried resetting pram nvram, ensuring midi settings are not muted and at 44.1 and removing and playing with the jack rapidly and restarting the mac then switching my amp off. So far no joy..Cheers
 
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I assume when you say your headphone jack is working, you have actually plugged in a headset and listened to sound coming out of it.

So, it must be your speakers, not your computer that's at fault. The last time I fixed this exact same problem for someone, there were two faults. (1) The speakers had a volume/on off switch that was turned all the way off. And, (2) the speakers required USB power but were plugged into an unpowered USB hub. When I turned on the speakers and plugged them into power, they worked fine.
 

bobtomay

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The red light indicates the optical switch is stuck in the 'on' position.
While it is stuck on, your internal speakers are not going to work.

You can take a toothpick (or similar) and tickle the inside of the jack to turn it off.
You're not jabbing it around hard enough to break anything, just kind of slide it in and out around the sides of the port until it turns off.
It happens on occassion - only once on my now 3 year old machine.

Or take it to Apple to let them fix it.
 
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just don't stick anything metal inside :D other than a jack of course :)
 

bobtomay

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bobtomay

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Took mine like 15 seconds.

I have heard of a very few that have actually had to take it to Apple to have hardware replaced.
 
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Yeah, that happened to my MacBook Pro Aluminum some months back. What fixed it was using a different pair of headphones. Somehow the ever so slight difference in its design structure (guessing outer shell which creates a certain distance from the plug to the housing) allowed it to simply fix what had happened. After that, I stopped putting in the plug which I had been using for external speakers.

You might want to get an extension for your speakers then. Like $5 at Radio Shack.

Doug
 
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This same thing happened to me with my old Macbook. Took it to Apple store, demonstrated it to the Genius, and they ended up replacing the logic board under Apple Care. Good thing too because when I saw the price tag of what I'd have been charged it was more than US$1200! All for a tiny little switch.

This new one is kind of dodgy with the plug too, might end up having to take this one in eventually.
 

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