Mac Pro and Surround Sound

Well, I can get my speakers to do surround with movies on DVD via optical. No games for the Mac are written with surround sound. So Windows games is where I'm at.

Mostly with Windows and games I have found that digital/optical to the speakers either doesn't work or gives stereo only.

So component audio as provided by many sound cards is the answer. Only, as far as I can deduce, there aren't any for the Mac Pro.

Any USB or Firewire solutions?

Okay, I have to grudgingly accept that there is nothing for the Mac Pro which can give 5.1 surround sound in Windows games.

One big problem is the PCI-e slots.

I found a promising Firewire gadget from Griffin Technologies called Firewave. But they don't do Windows drivers, only MacOSX drivers.

Frustrated. Maybe later?

For 5.1 on the Windows side you could check out the external USB sound card (Live! 24 bit external) from Creative.

Thanks J. for getting me to think outside the box. I was of course expecting and seeking MacOSX compatibility. But if it's only to be used for Windows games.....

Would I have to disable the Device Manager's RealTek entry in my Mac Pro? We don't have a BIOS in which to disable integrated audio. I guess the DM method would be no great hardship. Once I begin using such a device, could I leave it permanently connected and leave the RealTek component permanently disabled? This would save on frequent trips to the DM and plugging/unplugging the hardware. What about when in the MacOS?

I looked at the specs of the suggested Live! hardware. It only uses USB 1.1 and Creative warns that sound quality will be compromised to fit 5.1 surround data through this tiny pipeline.

Using the same though processes, I looked up the USB2 Audigy2 NX and while a little more expensive, it could be the answer I'm looking for. There's no mention of MacOS compatibility, of course. However, we users of these versatile IntelMacs probably need to get used to switching external hardware dependant on what OS we are booted in.

I think I'll order a 2NX.

Jon - where is the "audio midi setup" in the Saffire Control software? Are you referring to the setup in your midi sequencing software?

This application may be found in Applications/Utilities. It's part of the MacOSX as installed.

Feeding my Logitech Z-5500 5.1 system from the optical out, only gives me DPL2, (I think) from DVD movies. For games on the Mac, I needed to take a feed to the Logitechs from the headphone out as the optical feed didn't yield any audio from games. What does the optical out give us then? Nothing more than sound for DVDs and some MacOSX alert sounds.

Now I'm guesssing this but my intuition tells me that the optical path is a direct feed from the DVD player. Well, perhaps not really direct but certainly a different path to that of the integrated audio hardware.

Now we have one most serious problem here. Nearly all games ported to the Mac are encoded 2-channel only. Aspyr admitted this to me. I do not watch DVD movies on my Mac so the Logitechs are serving no purpose apart from providing stereo audio.

Aspyr says that since Apple only provides for 2-channel audio in hardware and software, game publishers never bother with surround information in their games. Aspyr says, if it did it could cause instability and crashes because the Mac is a 2-channel computer. Games with surround sound will be more common if Apple builds the feature into its computers.

Unless Apple changes it's policy we are stuck with 2-channel. And similarly, Windows on Intel Macs is hobbled because the same hardware is used by Windows.

Can a Firewire or USB decoder extract surround sound from Windows games? It certainly can on a PC. But what about an Intel Mac? I'm about to learn the answer when the Audigy2 NX arrives.