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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Desktops > Silver Mac Pro with surround sound system.....

Silver Mac Pro with surround sound system.....
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richard-gorman
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Nov 6, 2017, 10:02 AM
 
Afternoon everyone

I'm wanting to hook up my Mac Pro (old silver model) to a surround sound system for editing videos in surround sound

can this be done? if so how?

I noticed there are two optical audio ports on the Mac Pro - can those be utilised for surround sound?

Richard
     
P
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Nov 6, 2017, 12:57 PM
 
Yes, they can be used for surround sound, if the application you’re using to play the videos support it. It must transmit the audio as a compressed signal - almost always Dolby Digital, AKA AC3. You cannot send 5.1 bitstream audio over an optical interface, as there is not enough bandwidth to support it.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
reader50
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Nov 6, 2017, 02:26 PM
 
Just hook up an optical cable to the receiver. Go to Sys Prefs -> Sound -> Output (tab) and select Digital Out. Your receiver will do the rest. The receiver's sound logic will even try to convert mono/stereo into multichannel surround with limited success.
     
richard-gorman  (op)
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Nov 29, 2017, 08:50 AM
 
thank you for your replies

on a separate note - do I need a third party interface to be able to watch my final cut pro video output on a tv? as in just the video I'm editing
- I'd rather see the video output on a tv while having two monitors as an extended desktop
     
   
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