Audio issue (headphone output no working)

I had posted above that I had the same issues after Lion upgrade. I decided to buy a cheapo USB audio plug so I could at least get stereo sound. Certainly not ideal, but at least I have audio. Certainly has dampened my xsition to MAC from PC after the lion upgrade caused a lot of little bugs to appear on my mac. Has been perfroming flawless in its role till this point. No biggie, I was an HP devotee for years. I've learned to live with patch/upgrade bugs 😝. In the scheme of life, its minor.

In response to everyone on this thread, perhaps reading of my experience will assist you.

I upgraded to Lion about a week ago and had full use of both the headphone jack and internal speakers. Yesterday, I ran disk utility on the new recovery partition that Lion creates during installation (restart and hold Command-R). I verified my startup disk and repaired permissions. While doing this I had my speakers plugged in to my headphone jack.

I noticed about an hour later that the headphone jack output worked fine but when unplugged, I got no audio from the internal speakers. I could see the red light for the optical audio inside the headpone jack and when i tried to change the volume level the volume controls were locked, such as they would be if I was using the optical audio capabilities of the computer.

This expereicnce led me here and other places on the web, but no solution was found. Today, just for the heck of it, I restarted to the Lion recovery partition and ran disk utility again, this time with nothing plugged in the headhhone jack, and viola!, my internal speakers work again!

So if this issue remains unresolved for any of you, startup to the recovery partition and try some things! Perhaps it will fix the issue as it has for me. Well it started the problem as well, but that is another thread...

I encountered this problem for the first time today (one day after upgrading to Lion), with my mid-201 MBP 15".

It was working after the installation, but I just now experienced the same issues as others reported (no headphones device seen in the Sound preference panel, and sound plays only through the internals speakers without regards to whatever is plugged into the headphone jack).

However, I also found that rebooting cured the problem for me instantly. It can definitely be a pain to reboot when you're in the middle of something, but if you're the type that tends to never do a full reboot on your computer (like me) , give it a shot just in case.

Well, after a couple hours on the phone with Apple Care, and the engineers getting logs of my issues, it was deemed to be a hardware failure. I am a scientist by trade, and am dubious of coincidences like a hardware failure minutes after a software upgrade, but since Apple was allowing a cost exemption for the repair, I brought my iMac to the store. 5 days later, my machine was returned to me with new audio-out hardware and it works. Like I said, I am dubious of such coincidences, but then again, you can't argue with results.

That is total BS by apple, Ive had my logic board replaced twice for an unrelated issue and on both occasions with different logic boards the input jack does not recognize my headset. So every time I need to put my mac to sleep to only once I wake it up will it recognize the headset.

And this only happens on Lion, because on my old mac the same thing happened once I upgraded. Apple has really dropped the ball with Lion, if it weren't for compatibly issues with mac mail files i would downgrade to snow leopard. This is just one of the many annoyances of lion, I wish I have waited, cause as of now was the biggest mistake ive made.

I waited until the iOS5, iCould and Lion update last week to move from Snow Leopard to Lion (10.7.2). This is a new issue for me, but I see it's not new to Lion. Should've been fixed by this release.

I've tried numerous fixes and something usually works, but it doesn't stick. At the moment, my headphones are not being recognized at all even after trying everything I know of. I'm really beginning to wish I had not updated at all to Lion. Snow Leopard was a rock for me.

mikehammon, this solved my issue! I was having the same problem as fourztar, and this did the trick!

Thank you so much! 🙂

Same issue here Imac 24 10.5.8 I have been messing around with the heaphone port and the settings. I had it working then unpluged the external speakers to see if they would work. once I plugged them back in again they did not work. I think it is a software problem. By the beard of Zeus just as I am sitting here I go to Sound - Sound effects and moved the output volume bar and the sound returned to my speakers. Unpluged the speakers, then plug them back in now no speakers move the output bar back and forth and the speakers come back.Perhaps when you plug in a speaker jack it is muting the sound somehow. SOMEBODY BUY ME A BEER!

Thank you very much this worked for me after trying a couple times!

Same here

Macbook Pro (mid 2010) w/ 10.7

Ipod headphones work everytime !

With other headphones (and optical), the jack works randomly.

Tried playing with MIDI settings, tried rebooting, putting to sleep etc... worked randomly.

I had to buy a miniDVI->HDMI cable to plug into my receiver instead of my Optical...

Dear All,

I have the same problem after upgrading to MAC OSX Lion.

I have 13-inch, Mid 2009. It is working fine for few weeks after upgrading to OSX Lion and suddenly my internal speaker stop working. After searching and reading for this issue, i found out that you only need to insert external speaker or headset several times to work it again. Then when I want to use my headset, I also found out that it is not working and the sounds is only working in internal speaker. So, I tried to check the System preferences, sound then select "Sound Output" from use audio port for then my headset works again.

You only need to go to Sound and change the use audio port for option to work it properly.

For those of you who have not done so, it would be a good thing if you sent Apple feedback:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

MIKEHAMMON I LOVE YOU.

The Apple "Geniuses" wanted me to SHIP OUT MY COMPUTER to fix the "hardware issue"

I was losing my mind trying to tell them it was NOT a hardware issue!

OMG! Thank you, thank you, thank you. You do not even understand how happy I am right now.

Still, the refusal of Apple to acknowledge that this is clearly an issue that happens after a Lion upgrade, is so frustrating!

HEY APPLE: STAND BEHIND YOUR WORK. IF you put out a buggy product, ACKNOWLEDGE IT and don't make your customers pay for things (like sending out computers to fix nonexistent issues) they don't need!

Mike Hammon, I'll happily call you a genius. But after this experience, I probably won't use that term for Apple support any time soon.

this worked for me too! my external speakers (cable with two dividers) are running finally!! thx a lot

Excellent advice. Had same problem - did what you suggested and all working fine again. Thanks.