Optical Sound Out Problem

[manapple]

My MBP 13inch does not show more than a stereo out ( the 5 and 7 channel out comes up as grey - unselectable options) option. Why does this not work? Has anyone ever got more than 2 channel out from the mac? How??


Earlier this week I had problem with the sound being recieved by the amp, but that is fixed now as the optical cable was weak. Anyway.

Thanks for reading.

 

[manapple]

Since I have got no answer but 86 views. Let me repeat my question in a simple manner.

How do you get 5.1 sound in a mac?

Thanks again.

 

[Lennyvalentin]

If you're watching DVDs for example or other media that contains a multichannel audio stream it should get piped straight out the optical jack (dolby digital audio works for DVD playback for me.)

If you want 5.1 audio at all times, like from games and whatnot, simple answer is you can't. The optical connector doesn't offer the bandwidth necessary for multichannel audio, it was designed for CD-quality stereo only back in the 80s, so you need a realtime dolby digital encoder to compress all the channels first. Macos does not support this natively.

Alternatively, you could boot windows through bootcamp; windows vista/7 supports realtime dolby digital encoding if the proper hardware is present in the computer (intel HD audio, digital SPDIF interface). I'm not sure what windows detects the macbook multi-out jack as, but it could work.

Alternative 2 is to use third-party software. Apparantly there exists a set of drivers called AC3jack and Jack OS X, that when used together gives Macos the ability to output realtime multichannel audio. I haven't tried that though, but it might be worth a shot.

Good luck.

 

[manapple]

If you're watching DVDs for example or other media that contains a multichannel audio stream it should get piped straight out the optical jack (dolby digital audio works for DVD playback for me.)

Yes I am watching DVD's and video's with multichannel out, but the option for a 5.1 out is simply not available! When I go to the Audio Midi Setup Page, in the output box all I get is an option for 2 channel out. Here are all the screenshots for this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3157893?tstart=0

If you want 5.1 audio at all times, like from games and whatnot, simple answer is you can't. The optical connector doesn't offer the bandwidth necessary for multichannel audio, it was designed for CD-quality stereo only back in the 80s, so you need a realtime dolby digital encoder to compress all the channels first. Macos does not support this natively.

Okay. But no I want it only while viewing DVD's.

Alternatively, you could boot windows through bootcamp; windows vista/7 supports realtime dolby digital encoding if the proper hardware is present in the computer (intel HD audio, digital SPDIF interface). I'm not sure what windows detects the macbook multi-out jack as, but it could work.

I wont be doing this. I dislike windows now.

Alternative 2 is to use third-party software. Apparantly there exists a set of drivers called AC3jack and Jack OS X, that when used together gives Macos the ability to output realtime multichannel audio. I haven't tried that though, but it might be worth a shot.

Good luck.

I can try this. Will let you know if this works out for me. Though I am not so sure that if my mac itself cant output more than 2 channel how will a 3rd party sw do this...But I will give it a shot tonight.

But please see if you can solve my problem the normal way, without using 3rd party software (1st para).

Thank you for helping out!