Recent problem: No audio from front or rear 3.5mm jacks – 2012 Mac Pro (NOT MacBook Pro).

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Level 1

26 points

Recent problem: No audio from front or rear 3.5mm jacks – 2012 Mac Pro (NOT MacBook Pro).

No audio from front or rear 3.5mm jacks – 2012 Mac Pro (NOT MacBook Pro).

A couple years ago, the rear audio jack in my ancient Mac Pro stopped working with external speakers. These speakers continued working fine when plugged into a MacBook Pro, so problem was not speakers or cable. A techie friend suggested I buy a small and inexpensive USB to audio adapter to connect my external speakers. Sabrent adaptor did the trick for a few months, but then the USB adaptor failed for unknown reason, so I connected my speakers to the FRONT audio output port. That solved the problem until yesterday.

Suddenly, there was no output from the front output jack to the external speakers. The internal speakers remain fine. External speakers are fine – as I write this they are plugged into a MacBook Pro and playing Pandora. The MacPro internal speakers performed normally if selected in system settings.

Is this problem likely terminal, or is there a reasonably simple repair? Could the audio jacks just be failing and is replacing them reasonably simple?

Mac Pro

Posted on Dec 23, 2025 10:33 PM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

157,956 points

Dec 24, 2025 10:15 AM in response to tytoalbaow

That history of both the rear and front 3.5 mm jacks failing over time, with external speakers that you’ve independently verified as good, strongly suggests this is hardware degradation of the analog audio circuitry on the Mac Pro, not speakers or software.

On these older Mac Pros the analog jacks are hard-wired to the logic board or a small front I/O board, and once those components wear out there’s no easy software fix and Apple simply didn’t offer a consumer-level replacement module. Trying to repair or replace the built-in jacks typically isn’t cost-effective because they’re soldered to the board and parts are scarce.

With that said, I suggest a much more reliable long-term approach for external sound on that machine is to use an external audio interface USB card, which bypasses the failing onboard audio entirely. Modern USB interfaces work plug-and-play with macOS and give you clean, high-quality headphone/speaker outputs and line-outs.

Some suggested devices are:

All of these should simply connect by USB and show up in macOS System Settings → Sound as the audio output device.

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Answer 2

tytoalbaow Author

Level 1

26 points

Dec 24, 2025 10:04 PM in response to Tesserax

Thank you very much Tesserax. I appreciate the detailed explanation you gave. What you described would be a good solution, except for the cost of the devices you recommended.

That's because the old MacPro in question is rarely used for audio, and it's headed to retirement soon, so spending $200 + is not a sensible expenditure. The better (louder) audio is useful mostly for watching Youtube videos which deserve a larger screen than my laptop. Most of my Youtube viewing is on a laptop, with output to the speakers I mentioned. And that's good enough.

Maybe I'll try again with the inexpensive USB to audio adaptor I had bought on Amazon a while back (about $5) though whatever killed the first one is likely to cause the same thing again. Nevertheless, I am grateful for your effort to answer my question with a crystal clear explanation and potential solution – thank you!

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