Outputting 5.1 Channel Surround Sound from your Mac

THANK YOU marital 😉 95!!! I have been searching for an answer for days here. I FINALLY typed in THUNDERBOLT with my search this time and got yer CORRECT ANSWER/SOLUTION. To START with the OP (Parker) did NOT word the title properly! It should read...."Outputting 5.1 Channel Surround Sound from your Mac USING AN A/V RECEIVER"(or external equipment). I changed my HDMI Output settings to what you said and FINALLY, I have 5.1 instead of stereo sound now and it sounds AWESOME! Cheers......Nick 🙂

I go through the steps and when i get to the Click on each speaker to provide a test tone

all the surround speakers are silent. only LEFT and RIGHT speakers play the test tone.

I have a SONY STRDH520 Receiver, i use HDMI coming out of thunderbolt on my iMac.
Seems everything is set up correct , but i never get my Surround audio with the

Audio/Midi Setup Utility by clicking all the Multichannel speakers.

I am frustrated.

I just SOLVED my issue.

I use a StarTech TB2DOCK4KDHC and when I output TB/MiniDisplay to HDMI from the StarTech Surround fails.
I plugged my TB/MiniDisplay to HDMI adapter to muy iMac then in to my Receiver and SURROUND Works.

My StarTech TB2DOCK4KDHC is not working right.. 😟

I use the RCA connections to my Klipsch 2.1 Pro media speakers and a toslink optical connection to my 7.1 Yamaha AV receiver. I let my AV receiver handle all the decoding for surround sound. THX, DTS, Dolby Digital, Prologic, Cinema sound, 7 channel stereo, etc....They all work.

Thank You this help me!!! 🙂

So when using a program such as Logic Pro in which you can mix 5.1 surround, you use this same method?

Using optical out, same problem here. How to output surround sound?

It's working! Not really sure what changed. I've been running the same tests now for two days. Maybe there was a cable that needed jostling. Thanks so much for your help! You've been great!!