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I bought a 2012 13" Retina MacBook Pro, which has some seriously distorted output on the speakers above about 60 or 70% volume. The same thing is going on with the headphone jack above about 80% volume. I imagine this sort of thing is more likely to be an issue with the logic board rather than the speakers themselves?
I tried resetting PRAM and the SMC, no dice.
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Hard to say what is the issue. Many systems back in 2012 had OK audio, not great and nothing like most systems today. Between better materials using in the speaker construction as well as the better Digital to Analog conversion and the subsequent amplification.
In this generation of systems a common issue was the speaker membrane tend to breakdown when pushed to hard and the Amp's range would break down at the higher volumes. Replacing the speakers is about al, you can do.
There is just not much you can do natively within the Analog space. I'm not sure if the Retina version of the 2012 systems offered digital audio or not, my 2015 15" sadly doesn't.
For the sake of argument connecting to a better Amp via optical connection would be the way to go and using better speakers like Bose which is something I had toyed with with my 2012 Unibody system which had a digital out and in was quite good to my ear. Even still I wasn't raising the volume that high as I really didn't want my windows to get blown out or become deaf at that level.
As far as the headphone quality of the sound a have a nice Sony set which I find quite good both with my older 2012 Unibody as well as my current 2015 15" Retina system. So I can't explain your issue from that perspective.
I enjoy good music and I do think I have a good ear, but like most things what I find good maybe different than you.
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Thanks for the reply. Very interesting content in your reply. As the SSD in this system appears to be dead (won't show up in any way, shape, or form), I booted into a Lubuntu 22.04 boot drive to test the laptop and there was some light coming out of the headphone jack, so there does appear to be an optical output, but I'm not sure what kind (if there are several).
I will clarify, though, that I do believe something to actually be faulty in this computer, but I can't be sure. Without physically inspecting the speakers (which I could do), there's not much more I can say (I'll have a look at some point), but if they are visibly shot, that would seem to indicate that the problem lies somewhere else. I hope it's not logic board related. The best I can describe the sound is that there's a ton of clipping.
I do also have a 2012 13" Unibody MacBook Pro (which is, of course, pretty similar in terms of base hardware, other than the display), and its audio sounds fine, even at high volumes, I've never had a problem.
@rupertus All the speakers on MBP A1278 / A1286 / A1398 & A1502 models are eventually prone to break quite easily if using high or maximum volume after a time, regarding the headphone output this could point to a lose solder connection or dirt inside the socket maybe? I have encountered this problem and wiggling the audio jack creates a crackly distorted sound and sometimes it worked OK......
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Use a USB DAC / external sound card completely bypasses the faulty internal audio chip. However if you can replace the logic board it will fix the issue permanently— but that’s typically not cost-effective for a 2012 model unless you’re doing it yourself.
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Thanks for the response. That's kind of what I was thinking, that the logic board is probably the problem.
I lack the experience in microsoldering to do this, and paying a professional, as you say, would drive the cost up by a lot. For someone to replace the board, what I'm considering and what would be my recommendation to others would be to get another parts machine with a functional board (something with a cracked display, the housing being in terrible condition, or something) to be able to use that board. That option is likely to save a lot of money compared to buying a board on its own.
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