trouble with speakers on iphone 4 32gb

OK ... a few insights.  Alarms and "ding" sounds use a legacy speaker system from earlier models.  The music uses the higher fidelity sound system that supports the internal speaker, ear buds/phones and if you have the right TV cable it will send video and sound on the older RCA composite output.  In that third mode your volume control disappears completely even when playing music.  It's expecting your TV/stereo system to control the volume and sets audio out level to the composite "standard" and disables the ear buds and speaker..

  Normally The speaker output and ear bud output are controllable by the volume buttons.  The iPod is smart enough to "remember" separate volume setting for each so as you switch from one to the other if the last speaker setting was "zero" or "mute" the speaker is off but the volume controls still SHOULD work and bring the speaker "alive".

  Annoyingly ... if the ear buds are inserted or removed unexectedly the music player app and others "crash" and in the process can "lose" the speaker or both the speaker and ear buds and leave you in the TV cable mode.

  The only fix I found that is consistent is to uplug the USB end of your sync cable from your PC (to prevent auto-sunc from getting "confused") and unplug/re-plug the 30 pin (wider) plug on the sync cable from the iPod a few times until it "finds" the speaker again and decides you aren't using a TV cable.  Tonight's annoyance was that with the ear buds "out" it still thought they were plugged in so alarm sounds worked (like marimba) but when you raised/lowered the volume it showed "earphones" above the speaker icon showing the volume.  I also suspect that there is some subltle setting (triple tap with slide ?) that forces the speaker "off" to keep it silent when you are in a "quiet zone" like a library.  If there is one Apple isn't documenting in an abvious place but after 3 unplug/replug steps with the 30 pin connector the speaker came back for me.  I'd really like to know if there is some other setting someplace that could do this easier.

This issue sneaks up on me about once every minth or two.

Message was edited by: Robert Richer