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MBP 1,1-10,2 Replace Speakers
- Thread starter borgward
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It does: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBoo...10+Subwoofer+&+Right+Speaker+Replacement/4320
My old mid2009 has had quite a few of those, even need another one as I write this.
My old mid2009 has had quite a few of those, even need another one as I write this.
Those little foam-edged third speakers die so often. I usually end up just removing them when they die at this point. Pull the cone out, bridge the connections with a small resistor. That way no need to replace it again, and no more fart sounds from the ripped speaker. Just makes the sound slightly less full, which granted it wasn't terribly great to begin with 
Been a while. I plugged in a set of recording studio monitors. Still got very ragged sound. I next used a USB sound card, plugged in the monitors to get crystal clear sound. Internal speakers may or may not be good but there is something very wrong with the internal sound card. Is it replaceable or hard wired?
It’s doable, and at least at this time, is quite affordable (mods: not my store/stuff/whatever). I came across these kits last month and have installed them in both my 2011 13-inch MBP (which uses a slightly different speaker kit than the 2008–2010s) and my 2011 15-inch MBP.
The difference, especially for how little I paid for them, shipping inclusive, is night and day.
(Yes, I’m saying it’s worth the effort and affordable, if you still want built-in audio from your laptop which doesn’t sound like Crunch 'n' Munch.)
I think you don't understand. The sound is bad coming out of the builtin headphone port. No internal speakers involved. To reiterate, I connected my studio monitors to a USB external sound card dongle and got a clear sound. Again, I when I connected the monitors to the MacBook's mini headphone port the sound is very bad. That indicated the Mac's sound card is bad. Is it replaceable or just hard wired in?
My bad. Your opening question was about how to replace the physical speakers inside your MBP, not about the failure of analogue output more generally.
The sound chip is, indeed, soldered to the board (a RealTek chip). Soldered audio capability has been that way with most Macs dating straight back to the PowerPC days: the 1999 PCI Power Mac G4 I bought direct from Apple suffered a failed sound card (one channel just… gone), which necessitated a completely new logic board for a one-month-old system. Generally, however, audio/sound card failures on Macs tend to be uncommon.
What you didn’t answer was how the internal speakers, tinny in design as they might be, are working (or not). If they’re doing the same thing as when a headphone or analogue line-out is connected, then at minimum, the sound card/logic for analogue output may be compromised.
Two other tests, if you have cabling and gear, is to first test the optical output of the headphone port (if you have a TOS-link cable), and also to reconfigure the headphone port to be an analogue line-in microphone jack and to record audio from a connected mic. If the TOS-link works, then the problem may be with the DAC on the sound card. If both fail, then yes, it’s probably the sound card.
The last thing I would — long shot, but process of elimination — explore: pull out the battery. Pull the MagSafe. Perform an SMC reset (ignore the part about leaving the battery connected; unplug it after you’ve opened the bottom plate and hold down the power button for about fifteen seconds, to completely drain residual capacitor power).