5.1 sound from macbook not working, help!?!

[Popis1991]

Hey Guys!

i just bought a kickass sound system for my media room at home. I bought a Pioneer sc-1223 reciver with Jamo d-500 5.1 thx speaker system. The system works great with my apple tv, my xbox and everything else but with my macbook things get tricky. I have everything connected the same way, which is with an hdmi cable. i am using a macbook mid 2010 as a media pc.

When i play a full HD movie from VLC the sound vaguely plays from all speakers and mainly plays from my back left speaker. this only happens playing a mp4 och mkv file that has 5.1 encoded. When the file only has a 2.1 it works fine. When using quicktime, i have smilar problem.

So my question is, how do i fix the sound so it plays from all speakers equally and not only my back left? anyone have any suggestions? is my macbook too old to handle 5.1 sound properly mabye? or do i need an external soundcard?

 

[snaky69]

Hey Guys!

i just bought a kickass sound system for my media room at home. I bought a Pioneer sc-1223 reciver with Jamo d-500 5.1 thx speaker system. The system works great with my apple tv, my xbox and everything else but with my macbook things get tricky. I have everything connected the same way, which is with an hdmi cable. i am using a macbook mid 2010 as a media pc.

When i play a full HD movie from VLC the sound vaguely plays from all speakers and mainly plays from my back left speaker. this only happens playing a mp4 och mkv file that has 5.1 encoded. When the file only has a 2.1 it works fine. When using quicktime, i have smilar problem.

So my question is, how do i fix the sound so it plays from all speakers equally and not only my back left? anyone have any suggestions? is my macbook too old to handle 5.1 sound properly mabye? or do i need an external soundcard?

Your computer is not too old for 5.1. The MBP from 2007 onwards (I'm not sure about the 2006's) could do 5.1 through the optical port.

You are probably using a minidisplayport to hdmi adapter on that machine?

I'd tell you to go poke around in audio MIDI setup with your computer connected to the receiver. The interface is pretty straightforward. Going from there I'd test each speaker individually to verify your computer is able to send a signal to each. If it can't, perhaps your adapter is faulty. Check your sample rate as well, most movies are encoded at 48000Hz whereas most music is encoded at 44100Hz.

If everything works in audio MIDI setup, I'd go play around with the settings on your playback program of choice.

 

[Popis1991]

hmm okey good to know, then at least i know my computer is good.
actually I'm just using the mini display port to hdmi, should i complement with an optical sound cable? would that change anything?

iv tried playing around with the midi-setup but i just don't understand how it works?!?! any guidelines?

 

[snaky69]

hmm okey good to know, then at least i know my computer is good.
actually I'm just using the mini display port to hdmi, should i complement with an optical sound cable? would that change anything?

iv tried playing around with the midi-setup but i just don't understand how it works?!?! any guidelines?

You can use it to test whether you're sending the sound correctly.

You'll see your receiver listed on the left hand pane. I am on an external firewire interface so that's what I'm seeing.

Select that, the go to the output pane.

Once that's done, click configure speakers at the bottom right.

From there, select multi-channel and a 5.1 speaker configuration.

Once that's done, click each speaker, a test tone will play through that speaker if everything is working as intended.