How to mute speaker when headphone plugged in?

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drumsticksdrumsticks
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I have "regular" analog speakers connected to the back of my Powermac G5. When I try to plug a headphone in the front panel, the speakers continued playing! I was under the impression that the speakers are muted when headphones are plugged in?



I looked in System Preferences > Sound > Output and regardless of which output device I pick, sound still comes up from BOTH speaker and headphone.



This is the first time I've actually tried using the front panel headphone jack. What is going on? Thanks.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    ya this is definitly the dumbest piece of engineering on the G5.
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  • Reply 2 of 9
    drumsticksdrumsticks Posts: 315member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ipodandimac

    ya this is definitly the dumbest piece of engineering on the G5.



    You mean this is normal?
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  • Reply 3 of 9
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by drumsticks

    You mean this is normal?



    well i have the same problem
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  • Reply 4 of 9
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Where you see a blunder, I see a feature!



    I think it is great that the main speakers don't turn off when you use the headphone jack. My setup has a power button on my main speakers (very common) so I can choose to turn them off if I need to use headphones in private. At least I have a choice to use them or not. I don't care how good your headphones are, you can have a subwoofer hooked up to the back while using the headphone port in the front for fuller sound.
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  • Reply 5 of 9
    drumsticksdrumsticks Posts: 315member
    Hmm... So, it's not only my problem... I thought there was something wrong with my setup...



    My headphones are not great, it is dirt cheap in fact. I plugged the headphones in for the first time and assumed that the speakers were muted. Some time later, my friend walked by and commented that I had good music on. I was like, WTF? And so I discovered that the main speakers were still left on



    My speaker on/off switch is on the subwoofer, which is tucked away quite nicely. I can adjust the speaker volume from the front speaker, so, I can do the workaround, but I agree with ipodandimac that this is a silly engineering design...
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  • Reply 6 of 9
    galengalen Posts: 46member
    Is this a hardware or a software issue? I have an all-in-one beige G3 with built in speakers. It used to be, when I plugged in headphones, the built in speakers turned off, but since I've installed OSX.2 when I plug in the head pphones the speakers keep playing. Just my comment...



    Galen
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  • Reply 7 of 9
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    I have a Beige G3 Minitower and I swear that speaker has a mind of it's own! It can mute when I plug in headphones, it can adjust its own volume (rarely, but it happened) and using a program called MacAmp (preview or beta version) it would play my playlist while it was sleeping! That's right! Start a play list and put the computer to sleep and it powers down except the hard drive and speaker.



    Freaky things, but I love my Macs.
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  • Reply 8 of 9
    drumsticksdrumsticks Posts: 315member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Galen

    Is this a hardware or a software issue?



    My guess is software, but only over certain hardware. It seems to work properly on my friend's TiBook with similar software configurations...
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  • Reply 9 of 9
    bergzbergz Posts: 1,045member
    My 300 mhz ibook with Jaguar has been doing something strange recently. If headphones are plugged in at startup, it only allows you to adjust the volume within the muted headphones range, and so the internal speaker (when you remove the headphones) can't be heard--meaning that if you want to hear the speakers you have to restart without the headphones plugged in.



    If the headphone jack is empty at startup, and you subsequently plug in headphones, you get your ears blasted because the volume remains at the high speaker level, and in fact, when headphones are connected, the volume cannot be adjusted at all--not even the little menu bar adjuster.



    I've learned to live with it, since the internal silver-dollar ibook speaker is such shit in the 1st place, but since everyone's bitching about this topic, I figgered why not?



    --B
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