Headphone jack iMac 2012

I have a 21" 2012 iMac, and have experiencing problems with the headphone jack ever since the second week of buying it ( about 1.5 months ago).
When I insert a headphone jack into the socket, the head phones, for the most part, will not pay sound. The speaker icon in the top right, changes from a black feature to grey, as if the headphones are not connected.
Sometimes sound will play, but only briefly; mostly the icon will apear as disconnected.
The inbuilt computer speakers do work.
It is not a problem with the headphones, I have tried a number of pairs and all experience this problem.
It is not that I am not inserting the jack fully, I am and I hear the click.
I have been to System preferences and in the output box, it says that the selected device has no output controls.
Is this a software problem, or hardware?
It did work for the first week, and does occasionally work, but only temporally.
Any advice would be graftuly recieved!

Hello, I hear that jack is prone to problems, but...
Long shot, but...
Open Audio Midi Setup in Applications>Utilities, see the input & output options & KHz setting there, some things will change it for their own use, then not set it back

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2012 iMac loud headphone jack buzz

I have recently bought the 2012 21.5 inch 2.7 GHz iMac and everything has been working perfectly up until today.
Whenever i plug something into the audio in socket (Speakers or headphones) as soon as music or any type of sound is produced from the computer, the headphones or speakers make a very load buzzing noise. On speakers it sounds like more of a deep kind of sound, due to the better bass on the speakers, but on earphones it sound like a high pitched buzzing sound.
I have tried numberous different pairs of headphones but the same thing happens for all of them. I have changed the plug socket which the mac is plugged into as was suggested from another website, this did nothing. I have even changed rooms, so im pretty sure its nothing to do with static electricity or anything to do with the plug sockets.
I have blown lightly into the audio in hole to try and clean it out if anything is in there, this didnt work either.
There is nothing wrong with the external speakers, just when i plug headphones or speakers in. The volume of the buzzing isnt affected if i adjust the volume of the mac, and it still buzzes even if its on mute.
Up until today this hasnt been an issue, and the buzzing just began today for some reason.
One last thing, the buzzing only seems to come out of the left earpiece of the headphones which are plugged in.
Any ideas on what the problem could be and how to sort it would be much appreciated.
Its getting really annoying.
Thanks.

After I spoke to Apple care, I had to send mine in for repair to the local apple store. I was under warranty so It was repaired (actually got a replacement TBH) free of charge.
Its, from what I can gather, a loose/faulty connection in the headphone jack. Best ring them up and explain your situation, they are very helpful in fairness to them.

IMac force select "Display Audio" when headphone jack is in use

I have a new 2012 iMac and Thunderbolt Display. I use the Display Audio from time to time, but also use a set of high quality speakers plugged in to the headphone jack.
Some applications, like Chrome (Google Hangout, Gmail phone calls) will default to using the Display Audio as the speaker. If I have the headphone jack in use (using the desk speakers), then the Audio System Preferences will NOT let me select the "Display Audio" device. It will immediately highlight "Headphone" again. The problem is if I want to change the "Display Audio" volume, I have to remove the cable from the headphone port, then change the audio, then plug it back in the headphone port.
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Hi,
The problem with the selection of the headphone port is something I reported to Apple back in October 2012. After some time, the reply came back that this was intended behaviour, and my bug report was subsequently marked as, "behaves correctly"! I agree with you that this is a pain in the backside and certainly appears to be bug-like behaviour. If you can take the time, I'd ask you to file your own bug report on this matter here. Perhaps it'll help cause a re-think. You should be able to log in with your Apple ID.
As for your second question: many people are asking this now. Rogue Amoeba made such a thing years ago, but it doesn't work on modern, Intel-based Macs. Maybe they'd consider updating it if enough people asked?
For Chrome, you can use ChromeLauncherWithExtraAudio - I've tried it and it works fine, though once you've changed the audio output on launch you have to quit and re-launch to change it again. If you want to choose where to send audio from movies, radio and so forth you could start using VLC, which completely ignores the system audio settings, and lets you choose from any connected audio outputs.
HTH
<Links Edited By Host>

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Hi. I wasn't even sure where to post this, but here goes...
I got a new iMac at the Apple Store a few days ago. The same day, I installed Vista Ultimate. Right away, I noticed that the cpu cores (in Task Manager) were in use, one at about 100%. The overall CPU Usage showed 35%. No apps in use.
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I'm surprised to see this happening with the new iMac Core i5/i7s. I would expect Windows 7 to be better in that dept than Mac OS.
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That whole 35%/100% would indicate thread locking going on. And more prone with Core i7 (4 cores, 8 virtual cores with hyper-threading).
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snip
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Scuttling huge chunks of Vista architecture for a faster Windows

Is it possible to repair the headphone jack on the Imac?

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Since the jacks are generally mounted on the motherboard the only way to replace them is with the replacement of the motherboard. That will be costly.
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Slice-
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Here's what I found for you by searching Apple support:
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Headphone jack iMac 2012

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