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analog 5.1 with new MacPro

S

sammy5358

macrumors newbie
Original poster
I just bought a MAC for the first time. I've always had Soundblaster sound cards in my pc's and have utilized the ports front, back, and sub(centre) with my 5.1 analog speakers. So now that I have moved my main pc away to be replaced by the MAC, I have 3 plugs from the speakers now and am looking at a single plug in my new MacPro.

How do you I use plug these in ?

Thanks

Sammy
 
oops

apparently that is discontinued, but even if still available not compatible with new OS.
 
I just bought a MAC for the first time. I've always had Soundblaster sound cards in my pc's and have utilized the ports front, back, and sub(centre) with my 5.1 analog speakers. So now that I have moved my main pc away to be replaced by the MAC, I have 3 plugs from the speakers now and am looking at a single plug in my new MacPro.

How do you I use plug these in ?
Click to expand...

You don't, unfortunately. The only sound cards that tend to be available for Macs are professional sound cards that are designed for recording and interfacing and not things like consumer 5.1. Plus, the majority of them are still 32-bit PCI, which means they won't even plug into a Mac Pro.

If consumer sound card companies like Creative would stop neglecting the Mac platform like they've done for several years, things would be different.

Creative used to make a small decoder called the DDTS-100 (accepts optical or coaxial digital in and provides 5.1/7.1 decoding out to powered speakers) that would actually solve your problem, but they discontinued it. You might be able to snag a used one on eBay.

Your only option outside of that (as stated before) is to use an inexpensive receiver or processor with Dolby/DTS decoding.
 
I have the PC version of the Soundblaster X-Fi PCIe card in my Mac Pro '08, just for the Windows side of things.
Excellent for gaming etc.

As I have the Logitech Z-680 connected to the Soundblaster via 3 x direct channel (analog 5.1) I can enjoy the ultimate surround sound gaming experience in Windows XP/Vista.

Luckily this Z-680 console also has the toslink digital input, which is connected to the Mac Pro via toslink (duh...) for the audio in Mac OS X.
Apps like DVD Player, VLC, Plex can use this system for Dolby Digital surround sound in media files (DVD's MKV's etc.), but not for anything else ATM.

I am hoping for OpenAL to get into gear on this one...

Or.... like CaptainChunk said, if only they could get these cards working in Mac OS X... 🙄
 
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