Here are a few solid tips to help you bring your headphone’s or external speaker’s sound back to life, which has been a constantly nagging issue on Mac.
How many of you will be absolutely staggered to find out your headphone has stopped working right when you were savoring your favorite song on iTunes?
Worse, the headphone’s warranty has expired. And the only solution you are left with is to buy a brand new headphone. However, before you thrash out your hopes and plod your way through to grab a new pair of headphones, there are a couple of ways to inspect the existing case.
More often than not, audio stops blaring out of your Mac because there is a problem with the machine, not with your headphones or speakers. If your headphones doesn’t recognize audio, that doesn’t mean you should immediately jump to the conclusion that your headphone (or external speaker) has died.
Check the Sound With a Different Headphone
You can free to plug in any old but working headphones or earphones to your Mac, or connect your Mac to any spare speakers to unearth the problem.
If your old headphone picks up the sounds just fine, then you know the problem is not with your Mac. However, if that’s not the case, you should follow these instructions to fix the sound issue that has been escalated primarily from your Mac machine.
Reboot Your Mac Machine
A quick reboot of your Mac machine will automatically kindle the audio drivers, and hopefully, eliminate the sound problem completely and bring everything back to normal.
Use Toothpick to Kick the Sound Back In Your Mac
One of the Reddit member has a solution: “Take a toothpick and nudge the sensor switch back into place and then it may start working again.” Apparently, this has worked like a charm.
Not just toothpick, you are free to use any pointed piece of wood or plastic. Nudge the sensor carefully, then plug the headphones back in to check if you can hear the sound.
Reset SMC and Pram
Once again, if you are wrestling with your headphone on your Mac machine because it doesn’t recognize your headphones, try to do a SMC and PRAM reset.
Apple has documented the procedure here and here. Follow those instructions to wipe out the issue.
Quit Core Audio if There’s no Sound From Your Mac
Go to your Application folder, then Utilities and select Activity Monitor. You will notice a drop down menu to the left of search box. Select All Processes from the drop down menu.
In the search box, type “coreaudiod” without quotes as shown in the screenshot above. Highlight this item, and click on the Quit Process button.
You can also run the Terminal and type in this command:
sudo killall coreaudiod
App to Fix Audio on Mac OS X Lion Machine
Rebooting regularly to bring back the sound on your Mac can be frustrating. If you don’t want to do this every time, download this app from Kai Yen. Update: Click here to download the app.
Assuming your headphones and speakers are perfectly fine, this app will fix the ‘no sound’ problem you’ve been facing on your Mac machine — iMac, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air — which is running the latest Mac OS X Lion Operating System.
Remove older Apps
Mac OS X Lion has dozens of incompatible apps. Apparently, old PowerPC programs lurking on our system can ignite the audio issue. Find these declining apps, remove them and give a quick reboot to your Mac.
Check System Preference Sound Output
Lastly, you or someone must have configured the sound settings of your Mac — muted the volume, for instance.
Head over to System Preference -> Sound, check both the Output and Input settings and make sure the audio levels are locked in properly and the volume has been set to maximum.
These were some of the ways to fix the audio problem you’ve been facing on your Mac. Over to you: which solution worked for you? Let me know in the comments section below.