5.1 monitoring

At the meeting last night, someone asked Steve Martin why he was having issues trying to set up 5.1 monitoring using the optical port on his Mac Pro. Steve suggested taking the explanation offline but alluded to the fact that you do not want to use the built in optical port for doing this.

I never got to hear what the answer for this was. So, I pose it here

What is an economical solution for minitoring 5.1 on a Mac Pro?

Thanks!

Mike

You have a Kona LH or 3 or BM Extreme card? Multibridge Pro BOB? You can use that I'd think. STP2 manual makes recommendations. Dont have it in front of me.

Michael Horton
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I too was disappointed in not learning that.

The STP manual makes frequent reference to the Optical Out S/PIF port, alongside options of USB and FW with drivers!

Took away from the rest of the presentation. In troubleshooting, the first question always is: "Is It Plugged In?".

With STP, STP and Utilities > Audio MIDI Setup must like the output port before all of the STP surround features actually work - not just monitor.

E.G. - the demo of putting a 5.1 track in STP so you can visually see all 6 tracks, doesn't work if STP isn't happy with the output port - only shows visually 2 ch stereo of a 6 channel track.

On my G5, the Finder and QuickTime plays 5.1 files thru my Optical Port just fine (my new SONY 5.1 amp and speakers play music and test files just fine... the front panel display shows all 6 speakers, and the spoken test that sends one stream (called "stem" last night" at a time to each speaker (isolated) works as the voice says ("Front Left", "Front Right"...).

Audio MIDI Setup doesn't see it (the options for anything other than 2 ch stereo are grey), and therefore STP doesn't turn on its 5.1 surround capabilities.

Nothing on Apple's website about Audio MIDI Setup to address the real life situation of greyed out menu options.

That's really interesting to find that out....If you are going to design in 5.1, you need to have some real feedback, moving the "puck" is a great visual tool but not enough. For those of use who do not have a card but want 5.1 authoring ability, using the QT workaround kinda sucks...

So Utilities > Audio MIDI Setup doesn't allow me to pick Built-In Audio and allow me to choose any Speaker Configutration option other than Stereo.

So I went to town, Venice Beach to Hollywood, and visited Sam Ash on Sunset Blvd.

Left with the $200 M-Audio (AVID/ProTools) PCI card with break-out cables for 12ch IN and 10ch OUT. I'm good for 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1 !

I was displeased that despite the prevalence of Film and Music composers in Hollywood, even Sam Ash was reasonably clueless about hardware and software compatibility with Apple Pro Apps.

SA is a HUGE ProTools dealer... at least ProTools (M-Audio) needs to get on the stick! If you go to their website [www.M-Audio.com] you will see a "focus" page about Garageband... but SoundTrack Pro is to Garageband what MSWord is to Notepad.


So I installed the Delta1010LT PCI Card in my G5 PPC and installed the drivers (then went to the aforementioned webpage and downloaded the current drivers)... and have achieved much greater success.

In Utilities > Audio MIDI Setup, I can now see the Delta1010LT card, and I can pick all the additional options for Speaker Configuration (which were previously greyed out).

Haven't get hooked up the breakout cables to my amp! I just got this much further in the Apple setup before SNL ended last night.

Also, now in STP, the Surround Panner is more featured - BUT NOT COMPLETELY.

I can still only assign the output to a stereo submix, the option to assgn to Surround does not exist - eventhough on the Tutorial DVD that came with FCS2, the option is clearly there on the DVD for the Brit guy with the C3PO accent that puts me to sleep.

I'm getting closer, but not as far as the DVD nor the demo at the last FCPUG meeting.

I am a little disappointed that I had to go with a PCI card rather than a USB or FireWire external soundcard or breakout box so I could swap whatever solution between my G5, iMac and MacBook... ProTools has a $500 FireWire option which doesn't look all that promising in the context of STP playback monitoring, and Philips and Soundblaster both have USB external soundcards with the three mini-plug outputs for 5.1 speaker systems which I may try - IF I can find a model with mac drivers!

I had a M-Audio Revolution 7.1 PCI card last year at this time, connected to a $50 5.1 speaker system, and truly enjoyed it. But I thot it was overkill and Apple was not going to do 5.1 support anytime soon, so I kind of gave the card away! It would have worked well, and it would have saved me hassles of frequent trips to Big Box and chasing 10 miles on The 10 and Fairfax to Sunset Blvd to find disparate hardware from desperate stores!