Surround Sound on Mac Pro

Yes, I am aware that there have been many other threads on this topic, but I haven't been able to get a straight answer out of any of them. Also, i'm sorry if this is in the wrong section of the forums.

Here's the deal. I have a 1st-gen Mac Pro, and I'm thinking of buying a 5.1 surround sound speaker system. From what I could glean from the previously-mentioned threads (correct me if I'm wrong), Macs support pre-encoded surround sound (movies, music, etc.), but not real-time 5.1, like videogames. Also, (again, I could be wrong) Macs don't support surround-sound at all unless the speakers have digital-input. Unfortunately, the main reason I want surround sound is for gaming. Because of that I just need a system that works on Windows XP; I don't care if the surround sound functions on Mac OS X or not.

I've been looking at two different systems: the Logitech X540 and the Logitech Z-5500. The two differences between the two that might matter are that the Z-5500 has "Onboard 5.1 Digital Decoding", along with digital input.

Now, I've always been pretty good at software, but when it comes to hardware, I'm no better than a fish out of water. Please don't post any advanced technical jargon that I won't understand. I just need to know whether the Z-5500 would support real-time 5.1 surround sound on my Mac Pro Windows XP installation (without buying any additional hardware like sound-cards, etc.). If not, are there any surround sound speaker systems that would (again, without additional hardware)?

Thanks in advance, and if I haven't been specific on anything, or misunderstood anything, please let me know.

Hi,

1. You are correct in saying that Mac's do not support 5.1 surround unless it is through the Optical out and already encoded to 5.1 (eg. DTS/DolbyDigital).

2. Personally, I would purchase the Z-5500 if you can afford the extra - more power, hardware decoder unit and better quality sound.

3. I had a full 5.1 setup w/decoder (connected through Optical so equivalent to Z-5500) on my last PC. I selected 5.1 speakers in control panel, however even with that stereo audio would still be outputted in stereo and I would have to choose Dolby Pro-Logic or a matrix mode to hear it in 5.1.

Not all games support 5.1, however Dolby Digital output is an ever increasing option - those games did take advantage of all speakers. You could check to see if your games have this by going in to the options menu.

Hope that helps you out a little. Sure a few other people will chime in with their experiences.

Thanks, that certainly clears up quite a few questions.

However, you said that "Mac's do not support 5.1 surround unless it is through the Optical out and already encoded to 5.1 (eg. DTS/DolbyDigital)."

Does this mean real-time 5.1 output (i.e. videogames) won't work and I'll have to use matrix mode, or does the external decoder let it do real-time surround sound? Again, sorry about my lack of hardware knowledge.

On my old setup so long as the application could output 5.1 surround the decoder understands this and distributes it correctly through all speakers.

I didn't play many games, however Doom 3 and FEAR definetly worked in 5.1 perfectly.

My setup was using built-in audio (Sony notebook), SP-DIF (optical) out and a Creative Labs 5.1 system with a dolby and DTS decoder.

However, if I started playing a song in WMP the sound would only come out the front 2 speakers and sub. I would have to enable Dolby ProLogic or a upmixing mode to get 5.1.

I assume the Z-5500 would work the same but hopefully someone can confirm it for you before purchasing.

Hope that helps.