wheres my 5.1 Surround sound?

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Level 1

0 points

wheres my 5.1 Surround sound?

Okay, so here is my issue, and I hope you can help me with it. I have a 27" iMac dual booted with windows 7. I have the audio out through a 3.5 mm to optical (Toslink) cable into my surround sound system. My issue is that the cirrus logic cs4206a driver does not have the option of anything more than 2 channel sound output. I have already tried a couple suggestions on the internet, even wasted 5 bucks on dolby digital live and dts connect pack. Nothing is working and I was told that I could get true 5.1 dolby digital surround sound out of my iMac. If there is anyway possible to do this and I am just missing it. please let me know.

P.S. yes i know that no matter what the iMac cannot send out 5.1 audio signal it is compressed and must be decoded live by my surround sound. And my surround sound system is fully capable of that.

Thank you

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.7), bootcamp with windows 7

Posted on Mar 27, 2011 5:39 PM

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Answer 1

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Mar 29, 2011 5:06 AM in response to Dr.Grimm

Can you point me to where you "was told that I could get true 5.1 dolby digital surround sound out of my iMac" Because I don't see that.

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Answer 2

Somian

Level 1

4 points

Apr 13, 2011 12:10 AM in response to Dr.Grimm

You can get 5.1 surround sound out of your iMac if it's pre-encoded. If you play a DVD with dolby digital, it will be true 5.1.

However, if you want to play games in 5.1 on a mac running windows, You'll have to use a mac pro and install a sound card that supports hardware-encoding like a Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi.

Unfortunately, macs just can't real-time encode ac3 or DTS.

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Answer 3

parker612

Level 4

1,207 points

Jan 1, 2012 12:03 PM in response to Dr.Grimm

This is what I did to get surround sound,

- Use a Mini Display Port to HDMI cable and connect the HDMI into the HDMI input on the receiver and the Mini Display to the Mini Display Port on your Mac.

- Go to System Preferences on your Mac. Click on the "Sound" icon. Then in the "Output" tab, select your Surround System from the menu

- Then go into Applications > Utilities > Audio MIDI Setup. On the left side of the window select HDMI. On the right side it then should say "Source: (your speaker system)"

- Click the "Configure Speakers..." button in the bottom right of the window. Click the "Multichannel" tab. Then select "5.1 Surround" from the pull down menu. Click on each speaker to provide a test tone to make sure each is connect properly. Then click on "Apply"

- Last set is to go into the DVD Player. Go to "Preferences" and click on the "Disc Setup" tab. Under Audio at the bottom of the window select "Digital Out - (your speaker system)" from the drop down menu for "Audio output"

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