Mac won't recognize USB speakers

[NancyBa]

A month ago I tripped over my long headphone cord attached to my iMac, and a piece of the headphone jack ended up lodged in the headphone port.

When I finally got that tiny piece of the headphone jack removed, the headphone port stopped working.

When I plugged in a headphone, all I got was this and no sound (the sound, however, worked when nothing was plugged in):

So I read and tried every possible solution on the internet, to no avail, including zapping the PRAM.


What I decided to ultimately do was buy a USB speaker with a headphone jack.

That way, I can have the sound go out through the USB port while plugging my headphones into the USB speaker.

This is the USB speaker that I bought:

http://www.amazon.com/Hercules-XPS-2-0-Multimedia-Speakers/dp/B003XZ4KAA/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1324679346&sr=8-7


When I plugged the USB speaker in, it doesn't work.

In System Preferences --> Sound, I get only one option: "Internal Speakers."

Is there any way to get it to recognize my USB speaker?

I've tried everything from option clicking (doesn't work) to downloading applicatons like "SoundMenu" (doesn't work) and "SoundSource" (also doesn't work).

Thanks for any help.

 

[robbieduncan]

They say they are "USB Powered". I don't see anything that says they actually interface to the computer over USB: they simply draw power over it. You still need to connect them to the headphones/lineout output.