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Mac Pro with Boot Camp - Optical Audio Drivers?

XianPalin

XianPalin

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 26, 2006
298
11
I tried to ask this in the speaker thread but I think it got passed over, and someone else was curious as well:

If I get 5.1 speakers and use the optical-out port on the Mac, are there drivers for Windows that will support the optical out and let me do 5.1 as well? I'm curious as I intend to do some gaming on the box, and this greatly influences the speakers I would buy (2.1 vs 5.1)
 
also depends on the speakers, if it has a surround matrix and what kind of audio encoding it has. say the z5500's, they have Dolby digital surround encoding and works fine on my optical out on my macpro in XP and OSX 10.4.10

:)


:apple:
 
In your case I would get a receiver and an optical cable, then set the receiver to PROLOGIC II. This config iwill send sound to the center , music to the left and right and other enemies behind you to the rears. You can hook up your speakers to the receiver if you want to with some adapters, but I'd choose better speakers than crappy Pc ones.

It does a good job despite not being from creative. Not as good as DTS, and not as good as Creative Eax, but hey its decent.

Then you can have 5.1 sound.
 
Well right now I use the Griffin FireWave for 5.1 output in OS X. I guess I will continue to use that when I get my Mac Pro to get 5.1 in OS X, and then for Windows I will get some USB Headphones that do "5.1" surround, since it will mostly be for games anyways, and the included microphone can be used for gaming too.

If anyone cares, these are what I plan on going with I think:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826504004
 
I guess another headset is fine, I was just hoping to be able to use the internal Mac Pro sound card in Windows for 5.1 through the optical output but a USB headset works too I guess. Not great if you have friends over watching you game...
 
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So no one has gotten bootcamp on a Mac Pro to run 5.1 sound? I wanna use it for games too, but I want 5 speakers on 5.1, not what Bose has.
 
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