Help me fix my iPod.

September 23, 2008 4:46 AM

My 5.5G iPod Classic, which was working fine at least 3 days ago, has decided that it's not going to output sound anymore. Not through my earphones, not through a dock... nothing. On screen it says it is playing a song or a movie or whatever but the accompanying sounds do not come along for the ride. What might be the reasons for this, and how might they be easily fixed here at home (instead of a trip to the repair shop)?

I've tried a couple of different earphones on the iPod and none of them output any sound whatsoever. To be doubly sure I used those same earphones in my stereo and they did output sound so the fault definitely lies with the iPod. That said, when the iPod was connected to my computer via the USB cable it did play music, but given that it was using my computers speakers I doubt that that means much at all.

I have tried resetting the iPod and I just did a full restore to see if that would fix the problem; no surprises, it did not. My Google research dosen't seem to present any new solutions. So now I turn to you, AskMe, in my time of need.

Is there anything I've missed? Some simple, obvious solution that should be staring me in the face that I haven't thought of?

And if it looks like a trip to the repair shop is my only course of action, what might have happened inside the guts of my iPod to make it suddenly decide to stop making any noise? It was working fine just a few days ago and between now and then I've not used it once. Thankfully it's still under warranty (but only just), but if/when I do take it in for a service, I'd like to at least sound like I'm coming from a position of knowledge when I say what's gone wrong and please fix it.

Finally, on the repair/warranty angle, how is Apple's service like? I know I am definitely covered under warranty (I checked online which confirmed that I have the extended warranty plan from Apple, which runs out late January 2009). Are they quick to repair things or do they usually take their time? Should I expect them to screw me over with some fine print somehow or are they usually pretty decent and understanding when it comes to warranty issues? I'm in Brisbane, Australia, if that matters at all.

Thanks in advance!

posted by Effigy2000 to technology (7 answers total)

If you're covered under warranty, don't pry it open at home, you'll void it.

Also, maybe the iPod is indeed playing, but you lost your hearing. Just a thought.
posted by matteo at 4:54 AM on September 23, 2008

You don't mention it, and it seems trivial, but is your volume up?
posted by xmattxfx at 5:32 AM on September 23, 2008

You mention that the iPod does play when connected through the dock connector to the PC. Is it definitely the iPod that's playing then and not iTunes on the computer. Ideally, you should try to see if iPod is able to play through the dock connector by using iPod
speakers/iTrip etc.

If the dock connector works, but the headphone socket doesn't, then (assuming it's not the volume) it's likely that there the headphone socket is broken. If you've tried resetting the iPod and doing a full restore then I don't think there's much that you can do in any event and you definitely need to send it back to apple.

If the dock connector doesn't work, then there's probably something more deeply wrong, but in any event the advice is the same - send it back - you've tried everything you can without voiding your warranty (and at least you'll be able to explain the problem more clearly).
posted by Mattat at 6:44 AM on September 23, 2008

sir it sounds like your audio jack. this sounds like bad news but it isn't, because there are a lot of third-party ipod parts sellers online.

i replaced my ipod's audio jack when it died. it cost me thirty bucks and i did not need to own a soldering iron or anything else complicated - the parts are hilariously easy to swap out.

i got my jack from pdasmart. i'd google "ipod classic audio jack" and see who's selling 'em for how much.
posted by beefetish at 8:49 AM on September 23, 2008

A year or so ago I was having iTunes database corruptions problems where the custom gain for random songs was being set to 0. You might want to check a few songs in Itunes ...
posted by rfs at 9:46 AM on September 23, 2008

matteo: "Also, maybe the iPod is indeed playing, but you lost your hearing. Just a thought."

Yeah, no.

xmattxfx: "You don't mention it, and it seems trivial, but is your volume up?"

Yes, it is.

Thanks for all your help so far everyone. Looks like it's a trip to the repair shop, then. Hopefully Apple makes this easy rather than hard. I somehow doubt it will be though...
posted by Effigy2000 at 1:46 PM on September 23, 2008

Well, I was wrong. The warranty claim was absolutely painless. I took in my iPod yesterday and today I got a brand new 5.5G iPod in return. Or at least they tell me it's new... could be refurbished but by the looks of it it isn't. All in all, I was very impressed!
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:04 AM on September 25, 2008