New iMac 24" headphone Jack... No sound....

[agentphish]

My uncle has just purchased a new 24" a week ago. He orderd JBL creature II speakers because he liked mine so much.

He got the speakers, and plugged them up and attached them to the headphone jack on the back of his iMac...
and he gets no sound. He tried even a pair of headphones and got no sound.

The sound was playing fine out of the built in speakers. As soon as he hooks something to the headphone jack, the built in sound stops (as it should)

Anyone have any idea if the jack could somehow be muted itself or other things I could check. My only mac is my Powerbook G4 1.5ghz and I have plugged this machine to speakers 100 times using my headphone jack, and never had to change any settings at all.

Thanks!

 

[oduinnin]

You may try opening System preferences and select the Sound panel. If it shows the external speakers under Output, select them if they are plugged in and not selected and try again.

As far as I know, there is no other place to adjust sound.

 

[agentphish]

yeah, see they don't show up, but then again here on my Powerbook and on my girlfirend's G5 they don't show up, either when plugged in, but they still work...

 

[agentphish]

is it possible they are stuck in digital optical mode somehow? If so, how would i change it?

 

[CanadaRAM]

Try opening Garageband and closing it again, then trying the headphones again. Opening and closing Garageband resets some of the audio prefs and may clear it.

 

[agentphish]

no dice. No other suggestions?

 

[agentphish]

I had him shut down and cold boot with the Creature II's plugged in. Startup Chime came through the internals even though the creatures were plugged in.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I had him shut down and cold boot with the Creature II's plugged in. Startup Chime came through the internals even though the creatures were plugged in.

I've noticed this with my Klipsch Promedia 2.0's hooked up.. the chime still comes from internal.

I've also observed that the system remembers the volume setting for each setup. If you disconnect the speakers, the volume level goes to whatever the last setting was when using the internals.. hook the externals back up and it moves to the level last used when externals were hooked up.

This got me as I had muted my externals at one point, then unhooked them to reroute some wires. When I hooked back up, no sound... remembered that I was muted, etc. Probably not what is going on with your setup as it sounds like you have tried to adjust the volume/mute with the externals hooked up with no luck.

I have noticed that when my external speakers are hooked up the software says "headphones" not external. Not sure if that is the norm or somehow it is detecting impedance and deciding they are headphones?

Very well may be worth a call to Apple and see if they can diagnose this over the phone.

Best of luck!

 

[agentphish]

I've noticed this with my Klipsch Promedia 2.0's hooked up.. the chime still comes from internal.
...
Very well may be worth a call to Apple and see if they can diagnose this over the phone.

Best of luck!

After 3 hours on the iChat with him trying to diagnose things, and troubleshoot him, I told him to go ahead and call apple.

I really can't believe this has happend on a brand new out of the box machine. Seems to me that there's more and more QA issues with apple as they are growing like crazy. Unfortunate.

 

[agentphish]

He called apple, they insisted it was a software issue. Had him run some diagnostics off the install DVD.
It came back clean. He took it to the apple store and they said it was hardware and kept it for service to replace the headphone jack.

Shame.