Mac audio problem fixed with Ubuntu

djmammo

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Hello.
Please advise if there is a better place to post this on the forum.

Over the past several years I have experienced a well know but here-to-fore unsolvable problem with my 2010 MacBook (High Sierra).
The problem is the internal speakers suddenly stopped working. Headphone and Bluetooth audio are fine. Instead of internal speakers only digital out is listed and listed twice.
I have tried every remedy recommenced on every forum I could find including official Apple forums for a couple of years and nothing has worked.

Then last year I installed Ubuntu on the other half of the hard drive. When i am booted into Ubuntu the internal speakers work fine. Boot into MacOS and they stop working.
I completely reformatted the entire drive and reinstalled High Sierra (thinking something I had installed was the culprit) and the speakers stop working.

Is anyone here familiar with this problem and knows why Ubuntu works and a clean install of Mac High Sierra won't?

thanks !

DJ
Screen Shot 2021-11-20 at 3.07.30 PM.png
 


I can only guess at this your mac book was designed to run on snow leopard [which i assume it did well] at some time you upgraded to high sierra a jump of 8 builds so twixt one and the other they probably dropped support for your audio card as mountain lion was the last recommended upgrade from snow leopard
why dose linux work.. simple it is built to work on all makes and almost any age of machine using mainly its own drivers.

bwiz
 
I can only guess at this your mac book was designed to run on snow leopard [which i assume it did well] at some time you upgraded to high sierra a jump of 8 builds so twixt one and the other they probably dropped support for your audio card as mountain lion was the last recommended upgrade from snow leopard
why dose linux work.. simple it is built to work on all makes and almost any age of machine using mainly its own drivers.

bwiz
Hi. Thanks for the reply.

I pulled out this old laptop and upgraded it as it let me, I have copies of all the interim OS's, some it let me skip. The audio worked fine for a over a year without this problem. It was sudden and I don't recall what I did just before it happened. I should have a back up available but I did not.

When I saw that the problem went away with Ubuntu, I completely erased/reformatted the drive thinking whatever i installed that screwed things up would be gone but that wasnt the case.
 
Simply put, Linux has working drivers while your OS does not have working drivers. The hardware obviously works. If you want it to work in Mac (OS-X maybe, MacOS? I dunno what they're calling it these days) then you'll have to ask the Apple people. With your current knowledge to hand, you can claim and verify that the problem is a software problem and not a hardware problem.

I'm not sure how much support Apple will give you with a 20+ year old device, but you can always ask 'em. There's not much we can do to help you. The Linux drivers aren't going to work in your other OS.
 
if you are insistent on running mac then have a read of this

bwiz
 
Simply put, Linux has working drivers while your OS does not have working drivers. The hardware obviously works. If you want it to work in Mac (OS-X maybe, MacOS? I dunno what they're calling it these days) then you'll have to ask the Apple people. With your current knowledge to hand, you can claim and verify that the problem is a software problem and not a hardware problem.

I'm not sure how much support Apple will give you with a 20+ year old device, but you can always ask 'em. There's not much we can do to help you. The Linux drivers aren't going to work in your other OS.
Hello and thanks for the reply
Once again the audio was working fine with High Sierra for over a year. I found dozens of posts on Apple forums with the same problem, different age machines, different age OS, with this same problem dating back years and no recommendation worked. Apple themselves replied asking me what the forums said to do so they clearly dont know how to fix it dispite it being reported directly to Apple for many years.

I am wondering why completely erasing the drive and installing a fresh copy did not get rid of the problem. Is whatever is interfering with the audio in a place on the drive that i could not erase but Ubuntu could override?

I thought maybe since I ran out of Apple forums to read I would come here and find someone who had the same problem in the past and fixed it. It was a Hail Mary.

Thanks.
 
UPDATE
I booted the MacBook using a cloned back up of a Mac Mini running High Sierra that currently has no audio problems at all. The internal speakers did not work and that Digital Out replacing Internal Speakers. Start up from an Ubuntu install USB stick using the try/dont install option and the speakers work fine.
 
Again, I'm not sure what you think we can do to help? This is a *Linux* forum. We haven't got a clue how to fix your device when it's running OSX or whatever MacOS is calling itself these days. For that, you need Apple people, not Linux people.

If you want a solution that will probably work, write your favorite distro's ISO to a USB thumbdrive and install Linux. When asked, choose the "Erase" or "Full Disk" type of option and just use Linux. Forget that it ran OSX and just use a Linux distro of your choice.
 

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