The best way to get 5.1 sound out of Mac Pro

I use Boot Camp to boot Windows Vista on my Mac and found that through the optical out it is possible to get 5.1 sound out of the Mac directly with no additional hardware (I downloaded the demo of Medal of Honor: Airborne).

So the cheapest method would be to provide feedback to Apple ( http://www.apple.com/feedback/) and hope they update the drivers to support Mac games and hope that game developers take advantage of the drivers. If we're lucky Leopard will do this.

There are also devices like Firewave ( http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/firewave/) but I have not used them and don't know if they'll work with games.

I would have thought the simplest and cheapest solution would be to opt for an off the shelf 5.1 speaker system that plugs straight into the TOSLink digital out port.

That doesn't work for any Mac games that I know of. As I stated above it does work for Windows games. OS X's drivers only seem to support audio that is already encoded as a surround sound stream.

Well, XP doesnt make the games or the audio 5.1 or surround stream. they must be encoded into the game or audio files and bits for the speaker system to recognize its audio matrix.

Id recommend, though not necessarily CHEAP, but they are long lasting and definitely worth every cent, the Logitech Z-5500 5.1 system.

Has an Optical port to connect directly to the macpro, or other digital toslink connections (has Stereo, Stereo X2, PLII Music Mod, PLII Movie Mode) which are all perfect for 5.1 digital sound for gaming.

and you can connect them to other devices and switch at will. theyre pretty versatile and at 260-300$ not bad.

The only way this can be achieve with 5.1 or 7.1 is to have a independent Audio Interface,
Apogee is great but their Ensemble which interrogates with Apple Computer would be my last choice as it has so much issue, and hurts your ears!
The best one going is Fire-Face 800 by RME,
and the one yet to come which will be a take over is the OphEus by Prism!
Chance of getting may be until next year, as there is already a Long Que. and it hasn't even been realest

Having any of those interface doest the Trick, however their are lots a low budget Interface but they sure don't work on Mac's a word for the wise.

Fr.BlayZay.

Once again, the issue of 5.1 w/Apple comes up.

Here is the bottom line.

You will only get 5.1 audio if the following conditions are true:
- You are using the OPTICAL output on your Mac
- You are playing a DVD with a 5.1 soundtrack

That's it. The simple truth is, that even if you have a Z-5500 setup (like I do), you still will not get 5.1 surround in ///any/// applications other then while playing a DVD.

There is no way to get 5.1 out of a game on a Mac Pro. No matter how much money you throw at it. The support simply is not there. It is not a software issue, it is not a driver issue. It is the game developer's issue (sort of), and it is a //lack of hardware// issue.

The complex truth, and I will attempt to explain, isn't that simple.

Your Mac Pro or Macbook only has a single line-out, that supports 2 channels at the maximum. Optical audio will only handle 2 channels as well- it's the same signal (in two channels) on a different medium, basically.

All PC soundcards that support proper 5.1 (save for a select few) have //multiple// line-out jacks for Front Left/Right, Center/Sub, and Rear Left/Right (3 plugs total for 5.1). Since your Mac/Mac Pro doesn't have this, you can't hook up a 5.1 speaker set and expect true 5.1.

You do have optical audio, however, this only works in 5.1 when a Dolby Digital signal is piped through the optical cable.

Dolby Digital works by encoding a 5.1 signal as a data stream, sending it to a receiver, where it is decoded and played back as 5.1 stereo. DVD's have this audio pre-encoded on the disk.

If you wanted 5.1 output from your games, they'd need to ether have the sound/audio data encoded as Dolby 5.1, or support encoding on the fly to take a 5.1 signal, encode it, and pipe it out the optical audio plug. Xbox360 does this, because they've licensed the technology from Dolby- as have the game developers.

Unfortunately, none of the developers for Macintosh gaming have yet to include live Dolby 5.1 encoding (I think Doom 3 had a beta patch that did- I could be wrong).

If the game doesn't support the above feature, then you only get basic 2 channel audio.

*Do not buy a Fireface 800.*

This is a professional audio interface (like an external soundcard). While it supports 5.1 output via 6 individual outputs, you need SPEAKERS that have +built in amplifiers+ (called a Studio Monitor). Not just one amplifier- all the speakers have it built in and take a balanced stereo input.

You're looking at $1300 for the Fireface 800, and another $200 per speaker. This is not cheap, is not meant for gaming, and is not consumer grade equipment. It's pro audio, designed for Logic 8 and similar.

Even if you did spend the money, trust me, I'd know... I have a 5.1 setup running through an Apogee Ensemble (a $2000 "soundcard"), and I do not get 5.1 support from Quake 4, C&C 3, or any other game. I only get 5.1 surround from my audio production in Logic 8.

To recap, since this has been asked many times- and I don't want you wasting your money here (just trying to be helpful!)...

*There is no simple or cost-efficient way to get 5.1 from your Mac, other then while playing a DVD movie.*

I would highly recommend that you buy a very good pair of 2.1 speakers with a Sub woofer. Maybe even a pair that takes an optical input for audio. If you really want to spend the money to *watch a DVD in surround sound,* then you can... And it'll work wonderfully, but gaming will not give you surround sound at all.

*Again- There are no games out that support 5.1. Just because you technically support Dolby 5.1, doesn't mean the applications are aware of it and can utilize the 5.1 surround.*

Edit: I may have neglected to also mention that the Firewave unit will support 5.1 properly through 3 separate plugs (much like a PC soundcard does), however the only game I am aware of that supports this is Unreal Tournament 2003 for Mac (or was it 04?), with an experimental patch for 5.1 via OpenAL. Last I heard, it worked okay, but crashed occasionally.

Most of the other games out there just don't support 5.1, period (probably due to the lack of hardware on the Mac computers from the factory).

-SC

Message was edited by: ScottishCaptain

I don't have a Mac Pro, yet. I'll be getting one next week if Apple starts selling them with Leopard pre-installed. I have a set of Klipsch Promedia Ultra 5.1 speakers that use 3 analog inputs. I've been preparing for 6 months to get my first Mac so I have been asking questions.

The best way that I have found that will allow my speakers to get the best sound from a Mac Pro is to get a Creative DDTS-100 digital decoder. It has 3 optical inputs, 3 pairs of RCA analog inputs, and a digital input. It can output 5.1 or 7.1. It supports Dolby Digital, DTS, and NEO6. It can change stereo sound to simulated 5.1 or take 5.1 (optical/digital) like when playing DVDs. It will automatically detect true 5.1 input and handle it accordingly. The DDTS-100 is about US$150.

Right now, I have the following connected to the inputs:

A WinXP box: optical (SoundBlaster X-Fi Platinum)
Mini stereo: optical & RCA
Linux box: digital
TiVo DVR: RCA
1/8" to RCA cable: RCA (to allow direct iPod connections)

This leaves one optical input for the new Mac. The DDTS-100 sounds really good.

Enjoy life,
Steven

Thanks for the very comprehensive answer! The thing is, though, that I do most of my gaming on Boot Camp -side, where the 5.1 apparently works in games too? In any case, thanks for the replies.

Same issue...

You'll only get 2 channels out of the Mac Pro's onboard sound hardware (Line Out and Optical), in Mac OS X or Bootcamp/Windows XP.

You can't buy a PCI Express soundcard to install inside your Mac Pro for XP only, since those aren't available yet.

So the only option hardware wise is to buy something like that Firewave or a Creative external soundcard (though Creative's units only work in XP). You'll have much more luck getting an external unit like that running under XP *with surround* then under Mac OS X.

Ether way, you basically need an external soundcard, as well as Windows XP- if you want any sort of general surround support from most games out there (HL2, Quake 4, The Cake is a Lie, or TF2).

-SC

depending on the speaker configuration and the receiver optical will do justifiable surround sound with games without the need for an external soundcard, soundcards can only decode and act like receiver if the game no doubt has the surround sound options encoded. you dont wanna go out an buy something you really odnt need if the game doesnt even have it anyway.

ScottishCaptain is right.
I have a Mac Pro.
I have OSX, Vista, and XP installed.
The only way I ever get Dolby Digital 5.1, DD 6.1, or DTS sound is when I'm playing a DVD.
No matter what else I'm listening to, playing or watching, all I get is PCM 48 kHz which is only 2-channel.

This isn't an ideal solution since it is also currently limited to doing 5.1 output for DVDs only like every other poster has mentioned but I use M-Audio's Sonica Theater USB. It used to work great on a PPC based Mac since they had a driver that would expand normal stereo audio to all speakers but this app doesn't run on Intel Macs. It does however provide stereo output for all normal applications and if you use Apple's Audio MIDI Setup.app, it shows up and you can configure output for 6 channels and set up the speakers as 5.1 speakers. The ONLY benefit to using this approach is if you have a set of internally amplified speakers that only have analog, stereo inputs. For example, my Cambridge THX SoundWorks 5.1 system only has 3 stereo mini-jack inputs so I can't use an optical out from my iMac. Unless anyone knows of a way to break out the iMac's optical output in to the component analogs without using an expensive pre-amp decoder, this is the cheapest solution for me.

Hey, I was reading through this and I was wondering if what's been said here is applicable too to my situation. What I'm trying to do is figure out how to get a 5.1 signal out of my computer into a surround system. I'm not doing this for DVDs or games, but using Soundtrack Pro 2 (part of Final Cut Studio 2), which does allow for mixing in 5.1.

I understand from what has been posted here that even with an optical signal, that signal has to be Dolby encoded to give you true 5.1 (the reason why with optical on the iMacs you only get true 5.1 when watching a Dolby encoded DVD). Does anyone know if Soundtrack Pro 2 can output this Dolby signal over optical so that I can monitor 5.1? Or, do I need to spend some money on a whole sound system that will allow me to monitor and mix projects in 5.1?