Audio jack for multiple speakers

[PhilipD]

I'm new owner of a Mac Mini after a long unhappy sojourn with PCs...

I have several speakers (Logitech) which I had hooked up to my PC with three cables, black, pink, green...the Mac Mini only has one plus for Audio...what do I do to get sound out of these speakers all at once?

thanks

PhilipD

[BPresley321]

You need a toslink (optical) audio cable or an RCA cable with a 3.5 mm plug.

I had a problem with this initially as my 3.5 mm cable appeared to not fit but after some "maneuvering" it all worked out great.

What kind of inputs are on the speakers?

One of these (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10218&cs_id=1021804&p_id=665&seq=1&format=2) will probably work.

[geoffreak]

Sorry, but you'll need new speakers. Mac Minis only offer fiber optic audio as well as standard 3.5mm stereo audio.

[PhilipD]

thanks for the replies...
am confused...

the main speaker has a VGA connection plus 4 inputs like the RCA ... Black, Yellow, White & Red

[gr8tfly]

I'm going to leap at an assumption you have a 5.1 system.

So one connector is C/Sub, next is rear L/R and the last is front L/R - total of 6 analog channels.

The Mac supports 2 channel analog stereo out or full digital (including DD5.1) over its optical (TOSLINK) connection. If the Logitechs have optical digital in, then you're set. Otherwise, you will need an optical digital decoder which outputs the the 6 I described above in analog.

Griffen used to make a FireWave Firewave adapter to do just that. They're discontinued, but some are still around. I'm guessing by the time you invest in that, you're not too far from a new system that has optical, or a full blown home theater, including speakers, with the appropriate optical in.

[nickcliborne]

A cheap solution is to hit up radio shack and pick up a 3 female to 1 male headphone adapter.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102960

You're not going to get 5.1 but then again you aren't buying new speakers either.

[Spanky Deluxe]

A cheap solution is to hit up radio shack and pick up a 3 female to 1 male headphone adapter.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102960

You're not going to get 5.1 but then again you aren't buying new speakers either.

OS X doesn't really support 5.1 sound anyway unless you have third party hardware. Yes they do support pass through of things like AC3 etc so that DVDs and Videos encoded with 5.1 sound can be decoded by an external optical decoder but they don't support 5.1 sound in games via the optical out.