Jamtoast
03-06-2012, 12:41
Recently I discovered what seems to be a relatively little known feature in OSX - stop me if you've heard this...
Turns out you can use the OSX Audio MIDI Setup Utility to create multi-output devices.
This means for example you can simultaneously output to the Mac TOSLINK digital output and HDMI (on an HDMI equipped machine). Or for that matter the TOSLINK out and a USB audio driver (e.g. for an external DAC).
I use this in my system to output stereo via TOSLINK to a Beresford Caiman for music listening, but multichannel audio via HDMI for movies in 5.1. This is because the Caiman + dedicated stereo amp (unsurprisingly) sounds vastly superior to the DAC in my Onkyo receiver for music listening.
I think this is a great feature and really opens the door for a true Mac Media centre where you can separate the hardware for audiophile music listening and multichannel movie sound - all running from the same machine.
Happy to provide more details if anyone is interested.
Turns out you can use the OSX Audio MIDI Setup Utility to create multi-output devices.
This means for example you can simultaneously output to the Mac TOSLINK digital output and HDMI (on an HDMI equipped machine). Or for that matter the TOSLINK out and a USB audio driver (e.g. for an external DAC).
I use this in my system to output stereo via TOSLINK to a Beresford Caiman for music listening, but multichannel audio via HDMI for movies in 5.1. This is because the Caiman + dedicated stereo amp (unsurprisingly) sounds vastly superior to the DAC in my Onkyo receiver for music listening.
I think this is a great feature and really opens the door for a true Mac Media centre where you can separate the hardware for audiophile music listening and multichannel movie sound - all running from the same machine.
Happy to provide more details if anyone is interested.