I need assistance with my MacBook's headphone jack

[garirry]

I changed my MacBook's logic board to a 2009 one exactly one week ago, in order to gain compatibility with OS X El Capitan.

Today, I was working on something quick using Logic and naturally, the audio was not good enough on the computer so I plugged in some headphones. They were a bit difficult to insert, but it didn't seem like I broke anything, it seems the connector just wasn't aligned well with the case. When I pulled them out and tried listening to that music quickly, the audio wouldn't come out from the speakers.

Naturally, after seeing that the audio was disabled, I plugged my headphones back in and unplugged them after, but that didn't change a thing. I tried that a few times. I then went to the Internet and looked everywhere for a solution. Some recommended blowing inside, I tried that. Some recommended cleaning using a q-tip or whatever, I tried. Some said it was a software issue, I tried restarting, resetting PRAM, resetting SMC, booted into another OS partition, nothing worked. There is a chime though so it isn't the speakers. Finally, the most popular answer was that there was those connectors that needed to be pulled a bit because they become stuck. That's what I did. And I'll be perfectly honest, I think I went too far and broke it. Even though I completely pulled out the connectors, that did not work a slight bit!

In fact, the red light kept lighting up all the time and the headphone jack doesn't actually work now, so what the hell is going on. Plus, one thing that was weird was that I kept receiving in my settings audio panel that the "Headphone" output kept changing to "Optical Output". If my computer detects that there is no headphone plugged in, why does it still pretend like it is?

I'm confused. I've spent all night trying to figure this out. I need serious advice. I just changed my logic board, and I'm certainly not in monetary capacity to get another one. At least if I can get to force my OS to use the internal speakers no matter what, then I could maybe live with it.

So please, if you will, please help me, I will greatly appreciate it!

 

[Hellhammer]

Sounds like you probably broke something and how it's detecting headphones even though there aren't any plugged in. The headphone jack doubles as an optical mini-toslink port, hence the optical output in settings. Unfortunately there is no way to override the headphone jack, so as long as your Mac thinks something is connected it won't use the internal speakers for anything but the chime.

Your best option is to get a USB sound card. Those cost ~$20 so it's an easy and cheap way to gain a working headphone jack.

 

[Queen6]

Have you tried a using a toothpick to see if you can unjam the switch? What your describing was not too common, however from time to time the mechanical switch in the headphone socket would sometimes jam, some had luck in freeing it with a toothpick. If you search back through the MBP forum likely you will find instances of the same.

Q-6

 

[rezok]

deleted

 

[garirry]

The good news is that I eventually unjammed something (god knows what was actually the problem) and now the speakers work fine. Obviously, the headphone jack is heavily damaged now, so there's no way I'm getting analog output now (and it seems as if the audio input cannot act as output).

I was thinking maybe getting a small bluetooth device that has a headphone jack and that runs on batteries in order for me to get external audio at will. Any suggestions for this?

 

[garirry]

I was thinking maybe getting a small bluetooth device that has a headphone jack and that runs on batteries in order for me to get external audio at will. Any suggestions for this?

I'd like to bump this, if nobody minds. I haven't gotten any time to look at this, so any suggestions would be appreciated. Anyone has any?