No audio except System Sounds.

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Level 1

6 points

No audio except System Sounds.

Running Mojave on an iMac. Had sound recently... now only can hear system sounds through the internal speakers and headphones. Under "System preferences - Audio" the volume is set on mute, however the option is faded out and can't be unchecked. Looked for coreaudiod under the Activity Monitor, it's not there. Tried the terminal command to get it to restart, no luck. I also believe there used to be a red light illuminating from my headphone jack, and that's not on now. Any suggestions?

iMac, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jul 9, 2019 9:32 AM

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Answer 1

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Johnb-one

Level 6

9,180 points

Jul 9, 2019 10:32 AM in response to rbrinkman1

Yeah, a few. If you hold down the "option" key and click on the speaker icon at the top right of your screen, it'll show you all available sound inputs and outputs. You could also try running Audio MIDI setup, maybe something is stuck there. Otherwise, the usual advice applies-reset smc/pmu and zap pram. The red light you might have seen coming from your headphone jack meant that the optical audio output had been engaged. Yours was one of the ones with a combo headphone/optical audio output jack. You'd have used a miniToslink to toslink cable if you wanted to use the optical audio output. I don't think Apple offers digital audio output in any form anymore, at least not on the iMac's, but I hope I'm wrong on that one. Also go to system preferences, then click on sounds, then effects/alerts, and then play through.... and Line Out should be one of the choices.

good luck

John B

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Answer 2

rbrinkman1 Author

Level 1

6 points

Jul 9, 2019 10:39 AM in response to Johnb-one

Thank you John! Holding down option + speaker icon worked.

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No audio except System Sounds.

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