Audio out stuck on Digital Output after running an HDMI setup.

I followed bellipses tip above and that worked for me. Also took about 4 goes. Thanks

I had the same thing happen. Pull headphones out and Macbook decides to think its digital optical time. A family member, a retired Apple Store genius, ran the normal evaluations, messed with the PRAM. Sprayed compressed air. Finally he defautled to a toothpick. Toothpick worked.

I think this is an electro-mechanical problem, which explains why both manipulation and WD-40 had positive results. Being fairly near-sighted, I stared into the red light and probed the headphones port with a thin sewing needle. There appears to be two spots in the "roof" of the port that have moving parts which I think are signal switches. The one in the back is the one I pushed in and out with the needle a few times and that fixed the problem.

I am guessing that the signal switches tell the MacBook Pro what is plugged into it. The optical input is much shorter than the head phone jack. So the shorter optical jack would only depress the foremost switch. The headphones 1/8" jack would depress both switches. Of course, this means I probably fixed the front switch when I thought that the rear switch was the problem. I decided not to tempt fate and discontinued the experiment. Cheers.

There's another thread elsewhere addressing the same problem, in which numerous users (myself included) fixed the issue simply in the same fashion with nothing more than a toothpick. Apparently that digital out switch inside the port gets stuck very easily. http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=239287

FIXED IT! (workaround)

Hello all!

I've been trying to fix the audio output on my mid-09 macbook pro for almost two years now. Ever since the red light of **** started to come out from my headphone jack... I consider myself a "forum nerd" since I fixed almost any problem with the answers posted in forums.

Well, I've been trying everything I read on the forums to fix this issue: insert and remove an headphone plug several times; using a toothpick to try to release the microswitch that got stuck; using WD40 with the computer facing downwards; reset PRAM e everything else. Today I got the idea from a post solving another thing and there it was: the perfect workaround to my (and several other people, i've noticed) problem! THe thing is: if your macbook pro got stuck in the "digital out" port w/o a headphone jack inserted BUT the sound gets routed properly to the headphones when you insert them AND when you turn the laptop on you hear the "welcome" sound coming out from the speakers, the you have the same issue I assume I have: a problem with the microswitch between the speakers and the digital out.

Well, I thought about it for a very long time, and came up with an idea this evening, when I realized you could switch the headphone port from OUTPUT to INPUT... i've tried and guess what: IT WORKS!!!! here's how it's made (easy stuff):

1. get yourself an headphone jack (it doesn't even has to have a headphone attached, just the plug;

2. insert it in your headphone port;

3. ALT (control) - CLICK the speaker icon on the menu bar;

4. select Use Audio Port For: INPUT

5. there you go; the phone port now is set to receive signal instead of sending and... THE SPEAKER IS SET TO OUTPUT!!!!!

now i take just the plug with the macbook and my speakers can work!

I really hope I can help someone with this...

regards

piero

This worked!

I too have had this problem for over 2 years and tried everything. I can at least get output from the speakers now. Hopefully this is the first step toward my Mac remembering it has internal speakers ALL THE TIME so that I might have a functional headphone out once again.

Thanks for your generosity Pierox.

Cheers Pierox, worked for me too, only headphones and external speakers still wont work, as i have to have a jack plugged in for the internal speakers to work. any advice anyone?

Optical digital-out port problem

I have been dealing with the following problem with my macbook speakers: I can't get the Speakers to work. It doesn't show up on System Preferences as an option for Sound Output.

I am confident that it is not a hardware issue. I have windows running in the mac and the speakers are working just fine. Unfortunately on the mac OS the Sound Output is shown as Optical digital-out port. When headphones are plugged in, it works just fine.

I have installed a new version of the OS and I have reset the PRAM and SMC without any luck.

Any help will be appreciated.

MacBook, OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)

The method of changing the headphones to Sound Input worked for me. The only thing being that I need to have the headphones plugged in.

Great find @ pierox. Kudos.

P.S. Pierox you have helped me with your concept.

This is the only thing I have found to work but it works EVERY time.

1) Open Computer

2) Go to AUDIO MIDI Setup

3) At the very bottom left corner hit the "+" sign.

4) "create multi-output device"

5) In the settings for that device "check" the box "built-in output"

6) Hold down the "option" key and click the speaker icon at the top in the home bar of your computer and make sure to select "multi-output device".

Now you should get sound back from your computer speakers. But you still might have the grey icon up top and not be able to control the volume. So:

7) Hold down the "option" key and click the speaker icon at the top of your computer screen (on the home bar up top)

8) select "internal speakers"

Now every time you use headphones and then unplug them you will likely have to repeat #6-8.

this one worked for me....thumbs up🙂

I believe this issue is related to a logic board issue.....

When my Macbook Pro 17 Early 2011 had the massive video GPU issue last December, then the "Stuck on digital out" issue happened at the same time.

Recently i had my GPU reballed and this has cured the video crashing issue. For a few weeks my audio out jack worked fine. Now it gets the digital out problem all the time. The audio cuts in and out on it's own and i have cleaned the audio out port dozens of times.

Anyone else with this issue related to reballing a bad GPU?

This worked for me:

Click "Go" and then "Utilities" followed by "Disk Utility." Select your hard disk from the list of options on the left, and then click "Repair Disk Permissions." Sometimes, corrupted permissions can cause problems with audio.

This worked for me! Thanks for your post

After reading a bit and trying a few things I tried something someone posted here and worked. I played a song in iTunes with the headphones plugged in and unplugged, plugged again and sound came from the headphones but not from the speakers. Plugged again and sound again came from the headphones. Unplugged again but no sound from speakers again, and it just came to me to try the volume control and violå!! Hope this helps someone.