Optical Jack 5.1 Speaker to Speaker Help

[Syndacate]

Hey,

I have Logitech 5.1 surround speakers. I want true surround out of them..even though they're in matrix mode since I can't get them in back of me...but whatever...so I read about the optical port in the headphone/audio out jack.

If I use that, I've searched high and low, is there anyway to get from the optical 5.1 out in the MBP to the orange/green/black cables on my 5.1 speakers? (the orange/green/black 1/8" inputs seem to be the standard for computer 5.1)

I've found everything including exporting the sound through firewire cables to exernal sound cards, but they seem to have an optical to red/white (right left) stereo audio (RCA inputs) - is there something like that for the orange/green/black of computer 5.1 surround with 1/8" plugs? I couldn't find anything regarding it via google, and the apple store doesn't appear to have one.

Thanks in advance.

PS: Yes, I searched.

 

[ChrisA]

Hey,

I have Logitech 5.1 surround speakers. I want true surround out of them..even though they're in matrix mode since I can't get them in back of me...but whatever...so I read about the optical port in the headphone/audio out jack.

Yes that is the way, use the S/PDIF optical port. Send that to an AV Receiver. A 5.1 receiver is about the cheapest way to decode the spdif optical data stream. You can pick up a decent used AV receiver at any Goodwill or Salvation Army store for about $40. The the good news is that after spending the $40 you no longer need powered speakers, passive speakers would work.

 

[Syndacate]

Yes that is the way, use the S/PDIF optical port. Send that to an AV Receiver. A 5.1 receiver is about the cheapest way to decode the spdif optical data stream. You can pick up a decent used AV receiver at any Goodwill or Salvation Army store for about $40. The the good news is that after spending the $40 you no longer need powered speakers, passive speakers would work.

I really need a whole AV receiver to get this to work? I have a unit at home (it's a couple grand though, not 40 bucks), though here I only have the speakers - they work fine when I plug them into my desktop...I'm just trying to use the optical port to split the signal to front/rear/center. So I'd need to use an AV receiver or an external sound card for that?

What the hell is the use of this optical port then?

EDIT:
PS: The speakers have wires for center/front/back, so yeah, it has to be a decoded input, but there's no wires that decode it? I saw one for right/left RCA audio, so I'd assume they had similar ones for front/back/center 1/8" audio, no?