Help with audio out when plugging into 3.5" jack on a MacBook's combo input

Question

With my old iMac, I used to plug my guitar into the 3.5" microphone jack* and either used the computer's speakers or plug headphones into the separate headphone port for audio out.
Now I have MacBook Air with a headphone/mic combo port. I checked the sound settings in System Preferences and couldn't select speakers for external audio. Is there a way to assign audio-out to the speakers and keep audio-in assigned to the mic/headphone port? Or am I going to need to buy some dongle or adapter now?
*How did I connect a guitar to the 3.5" port? I used a generic computer speaker wire (3.5" on each side) and plugged a 3.5" to 1" adapter (the kind you use for stereo headphones) into the guitar.

Answer 1

Hi Tim -
Please bear with me because I am no Apple expert. However, I do remember reading something that might help you out.
You wrote that you store your sound libraries are installed on an external drive. Someone, who posted either here or on another Logic bulletin board, basically stated that problems may occur if an external hard disk drive that carries the sound libraries is FAT32 or NTFS formatted (formatted for a Windows-based computer). Apparently, an external hard disk drive utilized for sound libraries should be formatted as *Mac OS Extended* (not journaled). (I hope that someone more expert on this subject will either validate this claim or suggest another option.)
Try doing a Search in this forum for more information on this subject. But I think how that external drive is formatted might make a difference on performance for the Mac computer.
I come from the PC world as well. I like both the Apple and PC systems. But I really like working with the Logic program.
Good luck to you
Ted