How to connect Macbook Pro to 5.1-Channel Home Theater Speaker

[ajaykumar]

I recently got a Yamaha NS-SP1800BL 5.1-Channel Home Theater Speaker System as a gift. I am planning to hook it up with my Macbook Pro (2011). I bought the Toslink-to-Optical Mini Plug Digital Cable. Do I need anything else to connect to mbp to get 5.1 surround sound?

 

[Rizzm]

I recently got a Yamaha NS-SP1800BL 5.1-Channel Home Theater Speaker System as a gift. I am planning to hook it up with my Macbook Pro (2011). I bought the Toslink-to-Optical Mini Plug Digital Cable. Do I need anything else to connect to mbp to get 5.1 surround sound?

What kind of connections do these speakers have?

 

[Ozy]

With the new rMBP, the hdmi port carries discrete 7.1 to my Pioneer Elite receiver. It sounded awesome in Diablo 3. For my other macs I used a discontinued product called a FireWave. They stopped making them. It worked well for me on my MacPro for years until HDMI became available on that too.

Movie playback works fine using the tos link connector for 5.1 Dolby digital pass through. But for discrete audio inside of the operating system, the tos link adapter will not produce multichannel audio output. It will be stereo PCM only.