HELP! 5.1 on a Mac?

[Bob Gruen]

I finally got to the point of setting up the 5.1 channels of sound for my film (editing in Premiere) and I have discovered that there does not seem to be an affordable 5.1 monitoring solution for anything Macintosh...

After a few days of troubleshooting I've learned quite a bit about sound management. It seems that to properly feed a 5.1 system you either need the three separate stereo jacks or you need to encode Dolby on the fly to send it out to the S/PDIF cable to the 5.1 system to be decoded. This Dolby solution does not seem to exist.

Does anyone know of a low budget 5.1 sound solution on the Mac, or do I need to move the entire project to a PC?

Thanks,

Bob

 

[David W. Jones]

I have an older 5.1 setup that I built using an AJA Kona card to monitor 5.1 audio and HD video.

Good Luck!

 

[Tony Bacak]

the easiest way is:
http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/ensemble.php
or use an old used digidesign DIGI 002 Rack as output-module for getting 6 discrete outputs to an amp
after mixing 6 channels in realtime encode the channels to the final 5.1 with logic

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

What do you define as affordable?

You could use something as simple as an Black Magic HD Link card to monitor HDMI out and get surround through an HDMI AV amplifier.

There are lots of options. If you want to directly drive XLR audio monitors you can use Matrox MXO2 Rack, BlackMagic Multibridge Extreme and AJA Kona for example.

You can strip audio out of HD-SDI outputs and feed a mixer directly.

There are definitely solutions... I hesitate to say more because I am not really an "audio guy."

 

[Jon Lillie]

it really depends on what your budget is. I'm personally using a MOTU Traveler v1 (v3 linked) with a blue sky Media Desk MK 2 5.1 with a pro tools 9 rig. not exactly premier, but it works. I know Neyrinck makes some software for 5.1 audio use. They might have something that will work.

I'm not familiar with premier, you will need a way to encode/decode 5.1 into a single cable and then a speaker set up on the other end to hear it. or you will need to get a device that has 6 discrete outputs and can take a firewire cable from the computer, and a speaker set up to listen.

Hope some of the stuff I've put down is more helpful than harmful. Good luck.

Just found 5.1 surround sound in FCS2 looking for Final Cut Pro. Might help with Adobe's editor.

Looks like the Matrox MX02 will work with Priemere http://www.matrox.com/video/en/press/releases/mxo2_cs4_42/

 

[Marc Wielage]

I finally got to the point of setting up the 5.1 channels of sound for my film (editing in Premiere) and I have discovered that there does not seem to be an affordable 5.1 monitoring solution for anything Macintosh...

Pro Tools 9 and a good external surround receiver will do it. Six channels out of a Mac with a modest (under $1000) D/A converter work OK. The trick is to do this with timecode, change lists, and all of that.

Read the Pro Tools User Conference's "Post" section. Spend a day or two reading about how other people monitor 5.1 sound. The room, the speaker choice, and the acoustics are the real challenges here -- not your mix platform. If you don't have a good room and good speakers, you'll have no idea what you're really hearing, how it's going to translate to theaters, and even how it's going to translate to home systems.

Your other option would be to hire a professional sound mixer as a consultant to come in and give you advice. Trying to do this totally blind, without any experience, is fraught with problems.

 

[Bob Gruen]

I'm just looking for a $100 sound card, of which there are dozens to choose from in the PC world (that is if the embedded MOBO sound does not work out of the box).

As a summary, all of the solutions listed hear are over $1,300 and most of them do video encoding as a main function (that I don't need), so the prices are probably justified.

In my case all of my Mac's PCIe slots are used up so tack on another $2,500 for a PCI expander... Or

I can sell the #%$& thing and build a PC that actually fits my needs...

Bob

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

I'm just looking for a $100 sound card, of which there are dozens to choose from in the PC world (that is if the embedded MOBO sound does not work out of the box).

As a summary, all of the solutions listed hear are over $1,300 and most of them do video encoding as a main function (that I don't need), so the prices are probably justified.

Well it isn't a professional solution... but if that makes you happy, then you can get an audio interface.

http://tascam.com/product/us-800/overview/

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/673543-REG/Tascam_US_800_US_800_8_Input_.html

I haven't used that specific model, and I am not recommending it... but that is the class of hardware that sort of does what you want.

In checking things out a bit, most HDMI video i/o cards only support 2 channels of audio in or out via HDMI.

The BlackMagic Decklink 3D ($995) is a professional i/o card... and it supports 8 channels of embedded HDMI audio.

That's what I recommend if your work requires video as well as audio- but hey budgets are what they are.

 

[Paul Hazlett]

the optical port on your mac is 5.1 isn't it? you would need an amp that can accept that signal though.

 

[Bob Gruen]

You cannot map 6 channels of audio through the S/PDIF (optical), it can only carry stereo or Dolby encoded multi-channel. I'm also not convinced that the TASCAM would do it, but it might. I'm kind of skeptical of the USB connectivity, but it might work if the driver presents the OS the outputs as speakers.

Basically, in "Premiere Preferences -> Audio Output Mapping" you have to have multiple speakers to be able to map them. The Mac audio system only has 2 speakers as that is all the embedded hardware can produce. It can send a Dolby pre-encoded signal out the S/PDIF or out the coax (like from a DVD or your finished Dolby encoded project), but there is no on-the-fly Dolby encoder that would create 'virtual' speakers that you could map.

On a PC there are three or four jacks for direct audio connections to speakers (green, orange, black, and pink). In Premiere, if you have the driver installed properly and selected you see three or four speaker pairs that you then map to the channels in Premiere. You then set up your sequences to have a 5.1 master and each of the mono tracks in the sequence can be balanced across the speaker array.

Bob

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

A simple google got me some more...

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.family&ID=recording

This M-Audio gear is actually really good low end professional stuff.

$240 for a PCI card

$450 or so for a USB or Firewire interface.

For professional use these will blow away a $100 audio card with far better and more accurate performance and results. Timing is particularly critical in audio applications.

I certainly understand your frustration... but don't cripple your ability to work with a cheap audio card.