Update to 10.6.8 broke my optical audio - any help?

Hello,

i've downgraded my MacMini from 10.7.1 to 10.6.8 (installed from scratch) an still got no DTS or DD 5.1 from VLC.

Then i installed VLC 1.1.10 (current is 1.1.11) and now have DTS and DD 5.1 working! Give it a try, maybe it works for you, too.

Marco

10.6.7 was last stable in my opinion.

I have all kinds of strange problems now. In movies, music is loud, but hardly any voice. Seems like the channels for 5.1 are mixed up.

I have given up digital out. Analog stereo FTW 😟

Thanks so much! My audio broke when I installed 10.6.8. My optical output wouldn't register, neither did headphones. So I upgraded to lion hoping that would fix it. Fail. I took my Mac into apple to see if they could figure it out. Fail, although they did confirm the hardware was good upon booting back in snow leopard. Then I tried the link you sent, after a little fiddling my audio is back, now under 10.7.1.

Many thanks! Plex is running again with sound!

I have a 27" iMac with 2.66Ghz Intel Core i5. 10.6.8 broke my digital audio out as well which I used heavily (very disappointed in Apple's shoddy QA). Restoring AppleHDA.kext 1.9.9f12 from my TM archives had no effect. *Neither did the 10.6.8 Supplemental update*.

Does anyone have any more ideas? If I do a full TM restore back to June will I lose my user data or is only the O/S affected?

Same iMac and same problem for me. I reinstalled the OS via iMac software DVD(the OS version is ~10.6.3) and then updated to 10.6.7 and that worked for me. Make sure you double backup(TM and manual copy).

The snow leopard reinstall is actually "Archive and Install", so normally the user data is safe unless something goes wrong.

Also, make sure your software update is set to "manually" check/download when you are on 10.6.7, just in case someone else accidentally updates it to 10.6.8 again (my wife did that once!).

RZ, Thanks for the above. I delved deeper into my system, specifically System Preferences > Software Update > Installed Software and it's little wonder that 10.6.8Supp didn't fix my digital audio as I had installed it back on 8/10/11 as part of an automatic update without paying much attention.

Regarding your post above, I'm somewhat new to Mac so reinstalling the O/S from DVD and updating it (outside the scope of Software Update) is new to me. Is this process documented anywhere? If so I'd appreciate a link. If not, perhaps you could expand a bit on how to reinstall the O/S from the iMac DVD; how to update it to 10.6.7 (using TM? Software Update? Other?), and any other 'obvious' steps that this (and other) Windows reprobates are needing.

Adam, here is what I did:

0: backup via Time Machine and manual copy.

1st, insert your iMac Mac OS X Installation DVD, then go to System Preferences, Startup Disk, and choose DVD or Mac OS X Installation Disc as start up source.

2nd restart the computer and reinstall Snow Leopard over the current system/hard drive, like normally you do to install Mac OS X(it's very easy step and self explains. As long as you don't intentionally partition your hard drive or erase disk space via disk utility, you should be safe).

3rd after the re-installation is finished and the computer restarts(see if your apps and user data are still in place as before), go to here to download 10.6.7 combo update: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1361 and apply the update. And you can manually check other system updates after 10.6.7 update is done, just do NOT update the 10.6.8 this time.

When everything is set, you can check if the digital audio output now works. And make sure stay away from the 10.6.8 update.

Thanks again, RZ. I reinstalled from my Mac OS X DVD (which was a breeze) and then downloaded and installed ther 10.6.7 combo update. My AppleHDA.kext is now 1.9.9f12 but my digital out audio is still not working consistently. From the Beringer SRC2496 DAC in my audio system's perspective, it seems to be unable to get and maintain clock sync with the Mac which was never a problem prior to the 10.6.8 update. 😟 The higher I set the sample rate and bits in the Audio MIDI Setup screen, the worse it gets, and it used to run just fine at 24/96.

I've verified that my S/PIDF cable and DAC are OK by unplugging the fiber cable from the Mac and plugging it into a DVD player I have on hand.. perfect sync with no dropouts and no periods of zero audio + loud humming, which is another symptom of post-10.6.8 Mac digital out audio.

Seeing that Apple has proclaimed this problem as fixed in 10.6.8Supp, I now have little hope of getting this fixed unless someone here has another idea..

Update: I'm running 10.6.8Supp right now and have Digital Out (Toslink) audio working at 24/96 with a different model Behringer DAC. My original DAC still works 100% when driven via Toslink from a DVD player but it can't maintain clock snyc with the Mac for reasons I don't understand. Could be that the original DAC is failing prematurely (it is a Behringer, after all). Coincidental that it happened just after I upgraded to 10.6.8.

What about the just released 10.7.2 version? has anyone tried it?

TO ANYONE STILL EXPERIENCING THE DISCUSSED PROBLEM

The problem was initially caused by Apple changing the Core Audio API from Snow Leopard 10.6.8 onward and any version of Lion.

Apple issued a fix soon afterwards which fixed the issue where stereo output was lost after playing a Dolby or DTS source. But people were still having problems even playing these formats.

The solution is for all the application developers to adapt applications at their end. Videolan recently released VLC v1.1.12 which fixes the problem with the new API. Direct throughput of Dolby Digital, DTS, PCM all work now. So just wait until your app gets updated. As I said, VLC has been updated to work with the new API.