No sound thru internal speakers on my Macbook Pro

[craftymusic]

I have a 2 and a half year old MacBook Pro with 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 2GB Ram.

Just a couple of days ago sound stopped being output from the internal speakers. On the 'Sound' part of the System Preferences their is no longer a 'Internal Speaker' option (just 'Digital Out' and 'Aggregate Device' and, if I plug in my fireface 800 that also comes up as an option).

On Audio MIDI Setup, on Audio Devices, the Audio Output section bottom right corner of screen says 'Output is not supported'

I use Logic 8 and this is fine through the RME fireface but I often want to use internal speakers (for gigs and for internet stuff)

WTF?

I've tried a few things I can think of - Repair permissions, some Cocktail stuff, trashing prefs (although not exactly sure which prefs I should be trying...) but not getting anywhere.

Anyone got any suggestions?

Many thanks for your time...

[velocipede]

Sounds like you have tried a lot of stuff.

Maybe you did this, but I would try throwing out the "com.apple.soundpref.plist" if you have not.

This is kind of a hassle, but if possible, try installing a new system on another hard drive or partition. If the sound output is still not working when booted from a new system, it is probably a hardware problem. (Maybe you can check this by starting from a System DVD.)

Frankly, I would not be surprised if it is a hardware problem. I have a similarly aged MBP and it has issues with the optical drive and the USB and firewire ports flaking out.

[craftymusic]

Thanks for the suggestions Velocipede - I've tried the prefs but no joy.
Will try booting from a DVD (as soon as I can track it down!)
I suspect it might well be hardware problem though - this baby's got a lot of miles on the clock

[ottoman42a]

Hey Crafty, I had this very issue myself once. I googled it and found a Apple support thread that suggested I play something out of iTunes then take my headphones and plumb the jack back and forth until the mac recognized the output. The trick is to not go all the way in the headphones just halfway in and halfway out. Some people said the plumbing took them a while like three minutes or more. It took me like 30 seconds at the most for the mac to see the internal speakers. Hope this helps and good luck.

[craftymusic]

Thanks Ottoman, funnily enough I did this myself purely by accident and it was fixed in a nanosecond- I plugged the headphones in (in iTunes - I was there cos I launched it by accident) and, hey presto, I could hear music! I didn't realize until reading your post just now that I'd stumbled on some top secret obscure fix.....(I just thought, this computer is getting as old and as cranky as me)

Thanks for input guys

[ottoman42a]

HA! i'm glad to hear its all fixed for ya!

[bryanaamot]

Wow! I had to plug in my headset about 50 times before, all of the sudden, it worked!!! The same exact thing happened to my iPhone about a year ago. Since the Mac OS and iOS have the same exact bug, then I'm pretty sure this is a software issue.

[Jimmyboy]

Thanks Ottoman.

I just signed up to this website to say a big thank you to you for this fix.
It worked like a charm, exactly how you said, jiggling it half way in and out.
Fixed in 20 seconds.

[ottoman42a]

You're very welcome! Glad I could help and welcome to the board!

[powas]

Thanks Ottoman, I was really freaking out!

[G]

The post that keeps on giving.