no sound + red light in headphone jack

I must be a computer jinx. or stupid. or both.
I recently uploaded some music from a back up hard drive into my iTunes,
and when it was done copying I tried to play a song. No dice.
In fact, it won't make any noise at all. None. Zip. The volume is all the way up.
I'm pretty sure nothing is muted. Unless there's a secret mute somewhere that i
accidentally activated. There isn't even any sound from the headphones either.
HOWEVER, there is a red light coming from the headphone jack when I play a song
on iTunes. ***? Can anybody help me?

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Jul 22, 2008 9:26 PM

Sep 24, 2009 12:35 PM in response to jsngrkn

Sticking things like toothpicks and skewers into your headphone socket has bed news written all over it - although it may solve the problem after a lot of poking, there's a laser lens in there that you'll be covering in scratches! The red light that you see is SPDIF digital audio being transmitted because the electric circuit that detects the presence of headphones or any other analogue audio device has failed to engage. Try switching the computer off and putting a tiny amount of switch cleaner onto the end of your headphone jack, put it in the socket and wiggle it around gently. Give it some time to work and switch back on - when you plug in headphones the computer should recognise them (it may take a few attempts). Check by going into system preferences>audio and see if output says' Headphones - internal audio'.