No sound when using optical out (spdif/toslink)

I have an iMac 21" and when connecting a spdif/toslink cable to my surround receiver I get no sound at all.

I can see red light when I disconnect the cable from the surround receiver. Using the exact same cable and exact same receiver in the same port, it works when connected to my Airport Express and it works when connected to my Apple TV.

I have looked in the "Audio MIDI Setup.app" and it says Source: Digital Out, Format: 44100,0 Hz, 2ch-16bit.

Does anybody know what the heck is going on?

iMac8,1, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Aug 15, 2010 12:08 PM

17 replies

nachdenki

Level 3

649 points

Sep 8, 2010 9:31 AM in response to Nicolai Henriksen

well, I can tell you that the optical out works fine under 10.6.4. I'm using it all the time and it works fine, so it's not a general problem.

your problem seems really weird as everything seems to work except the exact connection that you want to use. I also can't see how the two devices could be incompatible, as a digital signal is just a digital signal. are you sure your receiver is set up correctly? mac OS normally needs no effort to set up digital sound, you just plug it in and there you go.

Sep 8, 2010 11:29 AM in response to nachdenki

Well, after some more tinkering, I can confirm that it's not a 10.6.4 thing, for me at least.
Despite the original cable working fine with a source other than the iMac, I switched to a different "cable" and immediately it was obvious that the signal at the destination end was much stronger - the red illumination was noticably brighter. Although they look identical, I'm now thinking that perhaps the first cable didn't seat all the way into the socket.

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No sound when using optical out (spdif/toslink)