Outputting 5.1 Channel Surround Sound from your Mac

Hey Waldo,

as far as I know there is no interim app that will automatically detect whether it's PCM or Dolby audio coming out of your Mac. To get PCM surround sound working with fcp x or logic you have to set it up in the audio midi set up for surround sound like others of said in the posts here then start a surroundsound project with Final Cut Pro X and you should get the discreet audio outputs. When you set up your audio midi setup to the proper surround settings your a/v amp should automatically switch to PCM audio surround before you even launch any apps you should be able to see 5.1 channel selection on your amp. I Understand what you're saying about the PS3 automatically switching between PCM and Dolby like a Blu-ray disc with PCM or a DVD with Dolby. If you leave your Mac set to PCM surround and then run VLC with a movie with Dolby surround and select the proper output within VLC your amp should do the auto switch to Dolby and then back to PCM once the movie stops. I have not really tried this but my guess is that is what will happen.

So that really is the same as what the PS3 does, it's the amp that does the switching depending on what digital signal it sees.

Thanks for the response Lance. Things still aren't working well for me, my receiver is still being shown as a stereo LCD TV for some reason. I'll keep fooling around with it.

Here's an idea, try removing your television from the equation and just have your av amp connected to your Mac. Then if it shows up as the AV amp not LCD TV try plugging the TV while everything is turned on and see what happens there.

I have my macbookpro connected directly to my av amp then the ampt to the TV. My pioneer plasma doesn't have any speakers. Perhaps there is some kind of pass through going on because your tv has speakers, try and set the TV audio in to analog so they are not seen by the amp, I know I'm reaching here but my guess is your tv is taking control of the audio some how.

I've followed your guide and I'm getting noise out of all my speakers (5.1) when I click on the test buttons in the Audio MIDI Setup. When I'm trying to do a 5.1 sound test from youtube or when I try to play a .MKV file I'm only getting sound out of two speakers, any ideas that can help me?

I used 48000.0 HZ and 8ch-16bit Integer so that I could choose 5.1 in the dropdown meny in Audio MIDI Setup.

VLC should be able to output the surround track of a .mkv file. I have never tried surround off YouTube.

Again the audio midi setup surround settings 5.1 etc are for when you are using apps like logic and Final Cut Pro.

If yo are using VLC selecting the proper audio track and output in vlc's preferences should auto switch your amp to surround mode. I have found that iTunes only does surroundsound if you purchased or rent a movie from iTunes, if it was a video that you converted with handbrake and it has a surround track iTunes still won't play that surround track but VLC will.

My comments were based on mini display port to hdmi, not toslink, but I just currently connected with toslinki so will do some testing with it when I get some time. And see what the differences are. I guess not all macs are created equal when it comes to surround sound and then you have all the different AV amps as part of the mix.

I've managed to get 5.1 out of my speakers when watching the .mkv file but I'm still not able to get 5.1 out off the YouTube Video (The exact same video plays just fine in 5.1 when I watch it from my PS3 connected to the same receiver).

Thank you for the guide btw without it I would still have been stuck with my old 2.0 setup.

My Mac is connected via Thunderbolt to hdmi to reciever and yes I'm watching the YouTube video in 720p.

That seems really strange to me 😝 will I be able to have both cables connected at the same time and do I need to do some kind of switching / settings fixing when going from watching a YouTube video to a .mkv file?

I am connecting a retina MBP to a new Denon receiver as I could not find a replacement for my Saffire interface that died. I want to get 5.1 from FCPX so I can monitor and mix.

I tried the Toslink optical and as Parker says - you can get 5.1 even though it states stereo but the problem is that I find it is not true 5.1. I get all 5 speakers outputting the same audio channel from FCPX.

I will go out and by a HDMI cable and try that. There is a lot of misinofrmation out there because I saw some posts that said retina's HDMI does not output 5.1.

I will check in here later. thanks.

It appears that the Retina HDMI port has a problem when attaching an ext. display like my thunderbolt display. When I attached the HDMI cable and turn on the Denon receiver my thunderbolt display goes blank or at least no menus and folders are visible. If I turn off the receiver it goes back to normal.

Here is the thread - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4312536?start=0&tstart=0

Not sure what my options are... not use the HDMI port? But why should I buy a thunderbolt-hdmi adapter when I alraedy have an HDMI port? This a terrible bug.