damaged audio jack - will usb speakers work?

[jenr2010]

I have a Macbook Pro and something happened to the audio jack recently. Not sure what but I have a 3 year old and pc husband at home. Basically the inside of the jack went from being an inny - where you can plug in an audio plug, to an outie - where you can only insert about half of your plug and it won't go in any further. When I go into Sound settings - Output it says the selected device has no controls, and the speaker icon on my status bar is greyed out. I brought it in and they said they would need to replace the logic board in order to fix the jack - $1,000.... yikes.

So long story short I am wondering if it is just the audio jack then could I buy usb speakers and use those instead? Any work around at all? I wish there were a way to just tell the computer to ignore anything the audio jack was telling it, but I was told that is not an option either.

Help!

 

[alust2013]

I would say an inexpensive pair of usb speakers should do the trick.

 

[djasterix]

I think that if the speaker icon is greyed out and you have no controls for audio, you may have a sound car problem, so no audio is being processed by your computer. In that case even the USB speakers won't work.

 

[jenr2010]

If I stick something like a paperclip in the jack, around the "outie" I can sometimes get the speaker icon to come back and work, although no sound comes out of the speakers because it thinks there are headphones plugged in... I am guessing.

 

[diablo2112]

It sounds like one of the three pins on the audio jack is shorting out. When this happens, the sound card probably shuts down to prevent frying the preamps. I would guess this is actually a fairly simple fix. I'd open up the back of the Mac, have a close look at the audio jack, and you'll see 3 bent wire strips which provide the contact against the audio plug. These are probably touching and out of alignment. You should be able to bend these back. Good luck, this sounds like a fixable problem without need for a new logic board.

 

[jbrenn]

I have a early 2008 MacBook Pro and usb speakers do not work it plays through the internal speakers.

 

[Kollis]

USB Stereo

Cheap pair of speakers w/o power supply works from an USB port on my 2009 Mac Mini.

HTH