MacBook Air no audio output device found ???????? *please help*

I made an account here just to verify that for my case at least, it was indeed the audio cable that went bad. I spent nearly a whole week's worth of free time trouble shooting this issue, thinking it was probably just software. I even reinstalled 10.5 from the original cd's, which actually got the icon back for like 10 minutes. Then I had to reinstal 10.6 and get all my settings back. What a huge waste of time. I don't remember who was the one who first identified the audio cable as the broken component, but thank you very much. It was very easy to replace on my late 2008 Air.

Mr. Greenwald's advice worked for my MBA 2.13 GHz/OS 10.5.8. Been having problems for a couple of days, plonked down the dosh for the phone support, which TEMPORARILY got the problem fixed with Disk Utility verifying and repairing permissions, then shutting down and doing the reboot: (1) shift-control-option-power (no response, which is as it should be), then (2) power button, followed by simultaneously hitting control-option-P-R. That worked, as I said, for a while, but the same thing kept happening. Sound would disappear, icon would disappear, and the whole shebang: no internal speakers showing up in Sound preferences/Output.

I tried a few of the other software tips in the thread above: p. 4 said something about deleting a Library/Preferences/com.apple.BezelServices.plist file. Did it. No results.

When I shut down, then held "D" down as I repowered, everything just came up as usual. No bong. I saw no evidence of any "diagnostic mode," until I went to About this Mac/More info/Diagnostics, and saw that indeed diagnostics had been run when I powered up. So, I shut down, did the reboot, and got the Bong.

This time it was different: my volume icon was there! Every other time I have rebooted, IF I got the Bong, I had to go into Sound Preferences and tell it to display my volume control.

Now what I'm trying to remember is: when I did my final reboot, was it a control-option-P-R reboot (see above). I think it was.

Either way, iTunes is playing happily now, and so far so good. Hallelujah! That's fixed it. Thanks, Mr. Greenwald.

Had the same issue, but when i tried to reboot whilst holding "d" i got the startup bong and audio has been working fine for the last 30 mins.. i have put my mac to sleep and woken up and all works, i haven't tried to restart as yet though..

The new cable has WORKED for me!!

It's very simple to replace - took about 15 mins minor surgery. So far no post-op complications and all well.

I think after reading around this issue (MBAir sound loss - input and output disappear form pref panes), it IS a hardware/cable issue. I think the original cable gradually gets cooked.

But the problem is so quirky that it's easy to mis-diagnose as software issue (comes back after re-start, comes back after resetting PRAM etc.), and bizarrely seems to rear its head especially after upgrading to Lion. Seems unlikely, but also seems to be the case.

Diagnosis - loose wire.

I wanted to thank everyone for their input and experiences with this issue. After loosing sound I took my MacBook Air into see a Genius. I told him what I had read on this forum and his reply was quite *****. Which suprised me because I have never had this happen. His reply was, "...I thought I was actually going to learn something new today but there is no way its the sound cable. Makes no sense. Its your logic board and optical drive."

I decided I was going to go with what I read and seemed to work for the majority of Air owners via this forum. I ordered the sound cable from www.ifixit.com. Very easy just type in your computer's serial number and followed the choices. The cable was 29.99 shipping was 5 bucks and arrived at my doors step 4 days later. Took me 20 minutes to swap out the cables via ifixit tutorial and everything works great!

It saved me 300 to 400 bucks....all smiles = D Hope this helps and thanks again.

best

j

No computer manufacturer is going to hire full blown electrical engineers to work in their tech support. More importantly, tech people (and I am one) aren't always the best at people skills. It's a tradeoff. That doesn't necessarily get in their way of solving the problem, but if he didn't have a better explanation for why the root cause was the logic board then he's not doing his job.

But he may have been partly right... part of the problem seems to be that the design for the audio flex cable connector on the logic board is mediocre. It's not a locking connector. But my opinion, and I haven't rigorously tested this, is that the non rigid structure and narrow cavity of the Macbook Air case bottom makes the folded flex cable not very well suited for it. Repeated flexing of the case bottom could press against the fragile folded cable and damage both the ribbon cable itself and loosen the connectors at the ends. Notice none of the completely flat (non-folded) cables, such as the keyboard controller cable, ever really seem to have this problem.

I would encourage a third party vendor to manufacture a non-folded design with the correct pin-outs and see how that holds up, or some kind of spacers that would keep the case bottom from bending the folded corners of the flex cable. Maybe that works, maybe it doesn't... but testing that hypothesis isn't something that frontline support engineers are typically paid enough to do.

Ok, this is what worked for me.

Shut down.

Restart in safe mode ( hold down shift button after you hear the start up sound (but you can't because of this issue so you have to guess)

Let it boot in safe mode (sign in)

after booted, RESTART

Upon restart sound was back.

Shut down.

Restart in SAFE MODE (hold down shift key after restart sound- can't hear this though with this issue so you have to guess)

Once booted in safe mode, enter your login.

Let boot all the way up.

RESTART

Sound is back.

(this is what worked for me.... I have iBook G4)

I'm having the same problem and this is not the first time. It has to do with the iTunes update, or at least it did last time. Shortly after the problem started iTunes sent out another update ant it fixed it.

The issue seems far too widespread to be a hardware problem. All of our cables would not go out at the exact same time. We should all send iTunes a message, so they can look into and give us an update.

My sound device started to disappear intermittently on my MacBook Air Rev A (classic). Could be restored after reboot but that only worked for a while. Ordered a new sound cable, screw driver and spudger from iFixIt and followed instructions how to replace it. Not complicated the repair took 1/2 hour. And now the sound is back!

I've had the same problem. I don't think it's strictly hardware. I'm not completely sure how to reproduce the problem, but I think I've figured out a workaround. It seems to depend on headphones. If I plug the headphones in and quit iTunes, everything starts working again.

When this happens, I can't hear anything out of the speakers, can't play YouTube videos, when headphones are not plugged in.

If I plug them in, now the speakers work again and the YouTube video that was previously stuck starts playing.

Good luck

I cant understand how could be a "cable" problem. My MBA is with "no output device found" after I reinstall mac osx. I think apple should find a solution to help us. Or, if the problem is realy the cable, is time to recall.

AlexZulu: It's an internal ribbon cable that is rather fragile. It connects the speaker assembly to the logic board.

So far, I've noticed two potential points of failure with this design. It's a "folded" ribbon cable rather than a flat one, and the two folds in the narrow space of the original MBA case can get crushed and cause non-visible damage to the cable's conductivity. This may be because the original MBA design was not entirely rigid. The case bottom has some flexibility to it.

The second point of failure is the contacts on the logic board and sound card themselves. Instead of an interlocking jack they used a design that can loosen, weakening the connection. This hypothesis seems to be supported by the fact that, if the audio flex cable (as it's called) is not actually damaged, unseating and re-seating the connectors on both ends can sometimes restore functionality. But over time, the connectors themselves can wear from too much wiggling.

I'm puzzled as to why they ever used this design, but I suspect it was revised in later versions as when the unibody MacBook Pro's came out, they seem to mostly use use flat internal cables with interlocking connectors that snap tight.

I am not sure what the correlation is to any of this but in using the RocketFish MiniVideo to HDMI out I was looking at the sound preferences and I lost all sound.

I was watching a youtube and also an espn video - no sound. I never changed anything.

For what ever reason I wanted to see if I could get any sound out of the system. I went to the preferences for sound and I simply clicked on a sound effect and it played. Returning to my you tube video the sound had returned - maybe this will work for some of you - maybe I am just lucky and or stupid. I have been called both - but I have my sound back!