Headphone out

EDIT ( I have a Sager N5793)
My headphone out has bad contact, so I have to hold the cord to get sound in both ears. This is progressing, so soon I won't be able to get stereo sound at all. I believe it's because my headphone plug is too big and heavy (Sennheiser HD515) even though I took precautions on having something to support the plug the whole time. Now I'm using a mini-extension instead of connecting the headphone directly.

So here's my question?: What can I do?
1) Can I buy a replacement for the headphone plug and change it myself or is attached to the motherboard?
2) Can I reroute the line in, mic or spdif to work as a the headphone out?
3) Should I get an external sound card? (very inconvenient because I already use an eSata adaptor on my pcmcia slot)

Any other ideas are welcomed.
Thanks.

 

You did not mention what laptop you have.
And most of the headphone jacks are soldered into the motherboard,so that`s a no ...

 

There's a thread floating around in this forum somewhere where myself and a few others have noted headphone jack problems with the np5790. Mine currently only gives sound out of one earpiece/speaker when something is plugged in, and for some it doesn't work at all.

I currently just use the mic-in remapped to use speakers, but it's not a great solution, so yes, you can do this. You have to go into RealTek audio manager, set it to enable popups when you plug something in (just click the folder looking icon on the upper right near where it says 'Analog' to do this) and then when you plug something in your mic or line-in jack, it will put up a popup and you can select front speakers or whatever.

I think some people have gone to either usb or express card slots, so that's an option as well.

It sucks that these jacks seem to be poorly made, but really, that's about the only thing I have any beef about with the np5790, so if that's all there ever is, I can live with it

 

you can reroute the headphone signal to either the line in or mic port, it should give you a popup asking what you plugged in if you have the realtek software installed

 

Thank you both for the answers. It works fine (for the time being)!

 

I have HD280 pro and I don't seem to have this problem. creative Xmod is not bad either

 

This is waht I did too. THe mic jack works fine for me.

 

I said a lot of times that the headphone jack is probably the weakest link in the laptop.
Mine died and since I was not satisfied with the poor quality coming out of the other jacks,remapped,I opted for a Creative Live 24 bit USB SoundCard.
Was never happier with the sound
I fully recommend it. You should find it anywhere between 50-100$ and it`s well worth the money.Awesome HUGE volume,awesome clarity,awesome bass control...etc.

 

Yes, one thing about remapping to other jacks is you lose sound quality. I hadn't noticed this before since most of the sounds I hear are games with loud booms but I was playing some mp3s yesterday and realized just how badly they sound going through the mic jack vs the headphone jack.

I might indeed have to go get a soundcard...