Advice on connecting external speakers

[cymro]

Hi,
I have just received a bose companion 3 external speaker system. I am using my macmini as a home theatre (using Plex). My Tv is an LG with as far as I can see two audio outs - headphones and optical audio out. I have two question that maybe someone could please give me some advice on
- With this set up in mind - am I better off connecting the Bose 3.5 jack to the headphone out of the TV or the Mac mini (the mac mini connects to the TV via HDMI)? At the moment I am connected to the TV - but would i get a better sound from the mac mini?
- the bose has a 3.5 mm jack only - but could i get a 3.5 mm > optical audio adaptor so that i could plug the bose 3.5mm into the optical audio out - would this improve matters?

Thanks for any advice - I just want to make sure that i get the best out of my system!

 

[Beanoir]

To answer the first question, i'd imagine the difference in sound quality will not be noticeable between either using the 3.5mm jack on the TV or the Mini as both will be using very basic DACs. If you watch regular television or use other sources (DVD, Bluray etc) then if you have the speakers connected to the TV then you'll benefit from them when using any source running through the TV rather than just being able to use them when playing material from the Mini alone.

I thought the Mini (like all recent Macs) had a combined single socket for 3.5mm and mini optical anyway? So i'm struggling to see how using another adapter externally would change anything...either way, the answer is no because the speakers will require an analogue signal and so hence why they have a 3.5mm jack - thats normal. The Bose speakers (like most speakers I know of) do not have the ability to convert a digital signal (fed via optical or similar) to analogue and rely on the conversion to be done by the source components.

 

[cymro]

thanks very much. they do sound fantastic anyway.