USB speakers not working on iMac

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. This is what I get.

The built-in output here is my 2.1 speakers plugged into the headphone jack. If I unplug them, it leaves me with just the internal speakers. Still no usb speakers found.

The usb ports seem to be working; they recognize flash drives and my external hard drive just fine.

Well, it turns out the usb cable was the culprit, but I have a new problem now.

The computer recognized the speakers as soon as I plugged them in with a new cable, but I can't get audio to go through them. I can select them from the midi screen, but the sound still comes from my speakers plugged into the headphone jack.

The strange thing is, when I click on the audio icon in the upper right it shows that the Klipsches are selected. But the sound is still only coming from the other speakers. I've unplugged them and then the audio just goes through the internal speakers.

Yep, they stay selected, but still no sound through them.

When I go to Configure Speakers I can get them to play the left and right white noise signal, but that's it through my computer. They work fine with the optical output from my TV.

Well, I thought I had them working. I unplugged the usb speakers to move them across the room and the problem started over. I reset the smc again, and now the problem is the opposite: the usb speakers are the only ones that will work. It shows that headphones are selected in the upper right audio selector.

I tried the new suggestion of removing and adding speakers, but the - option is grayed out...

Well, I tried that.

At first it would only let me pick one set of speakers.

Then I went and did something else for 20 minutes and when I came back it worked fine. For about two minutes.

Then I could only choose the usb speakers.

Now I can choose both sets of speakers, but the usb speakers cut out several times a second. I've tried two different media players and YouTube, and it does it with all of them.

Yeah, they worked for about 5 minutes after you helped me the first time. Then I unplugged them to move them, and they worked for a few minutes. Now they're still cutting out after not working at all.

They're new, so the only time they work was for those few minutes. And they worked perfectly then.

The speakers work fine with other sources. Maybe there's some incompatibility with them and Apple, but I don't think so.

My OS is 10.13.3.

Yeah, I'll go that route. I took everything apart and tried this shorter usb cord and it's working fine now. I wonder if they're just really picky about cables.

Anyway, I think you got things as good as I can get them on the Apple side of things. Thanks for all your time!

Same thing. The sound still comes through the other speakers.