Stefan Ernst

Mac: Multichannel audio with stock G5 or MacPro on OS X

G5/MacPro Optical Out

Even without having upgraded your shiny G5 with a multichannel soundcard that supports DTS/Dolby and whatever you may crave for, you can have certain applications output mind wobbling surround sound.

All you need:
A G5, Mac Pro, Powerbook, whatever has a digital optical out/TOSLink connector; an amplifier/receiver that has a decoder for the multichannel surround codec you’d like to use (commonly that would be DTS/Dolby); DVD Player; a multichannel DVD; five minutes of time.

First you’ll have to hook up your machine, that preferably has a connector like this

G5/MacPro Optical Out

On some computers like the PowerBook/MacBook Pro the 3.5mm Stereo Jack and the Optical Out are combined in one plug, so you’ll have to get one of those long nosed TOSLink plugs, which shouldn’t be too difficult though.

Now set up your Amplifier/Receiver properly. If you want all of your Mac’s sound to use the Optical Out, you can of course set the default output device in the the System Preferences to the Optical Out. Keep in mind, however, that you will not be able to use your keyboard’s volume control keys anymore as, for technical reasons, the system volume can only either be on or mute when using the built in Optical Out - you can still control the volume in all the applications apart from DVD Player separately though.

Next step: Open up DVD Player and go to the preferences. Change your output to the Optical Out

DVD Player Preferences

Click OK and you’re all set.

Pop in a DVD of your liking and start enjoying the prettyness of surround sound from your stock Macintosh Computer.

This, as said, only works when your amplifier has a built in multichannel decoder, because all DVD Player basically does is forward the encoded sound channel as digital data stream from your Mac to your Amp. Unfortunately this also means that DVD Player, while running, takes over the whole sound channel of your computer, so aslong as you’re enjoying your DVD you will have no other sound disturbing you, which can be good and bad at the same time. You can work around this by using different output devices for different sound output.

Or, if you just want proper comfyness, you probably won’t get around buying a real surround capable sound card.

Enjoy.

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