Mac mini to surround sound...

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Level 1

13 points

Mac mini to surround sound...

Hi,
My dad has just purchased a new Mac mini(He doesn't really know about this support so I am posting on his behalf)... He has it hooked up to his flat screen tv via HDMI but he says that when sound is played on the computer it does not play through his tv or surround sound system.. Is there a way to change this so it will play through his surround sound? or does he need to buy another cord or something?

Mac Mini, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Apr 13, 2011 7:44 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 13, 2011 8:08 AM in response to davidar75

can you please supply a bit more info about the tv and surround device.

Does he currently have another HDMI device playing through his tv which also comes out of the surround?

is the surround hooked up to the tv? does the tv allow passing of audio to the surround? Does the mac connect in to the surround and then on to the tv?

The mac mini's speaker output is also an optical output and you can use a TOSLINK cable with a TOSLINK mini-plug adapter. Does he need to hook up the audio separately to the surround?

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Answer 2

iamRandy

Level 1

0 points

Apr 17, 2011 9:51 PM in response to davidar75

I got mine working by using the multi channel setting for the hdmi output but select 48000 hz and 2 ch (bit rate doesn't matter) instead of the 96000 hz 8 ch default. I also did some other things but I am not sure if they were essential.

1. loaded perian and set the output to multichannel ( the hdmi driver may already do this but bot sure.)

2. Set the DVD player to in preferences disk set up to use Digital Output instead of System Output.

3. Ran these commands in terminal tool.

defaults write com.cod3r.a52codec attemptPassthrough 1

defaults write org.perian.Perian attemptDTSPassthrough 1

There are a lot of post on the net that say you must use the optical outputs to get surround sound. I found that not to be true. Try setting the hdmi to multichannel 48000 hz 2 ch first and if that doesn't work try the other steps.

randy

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Answer 3

Apr 17, 2011 11:02 PM in response to davidar75

He will need to change the sound output settings.

Open System Preferences, then navigate to the 'Sound' pane. From there, select the 'Output' tab

From there, just select the 'HDMI' type output. It will be named according to the device it is plugged into (mine shows the model number of my TV)

This should output sound using the HDMI cable directly the the TV or surround sound system that the HDMI cable is connected to. Otherwise, you could use an optical (TOSLINK) cable to connect the audio output jack to an optical input on his surround sound system. Here is a link to such a cable: http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?p_id=1556

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