Just bought a Mac Pro, how can I get 5.1/DTS out of this thing?

What do I need? I have a small office, don't need a high end sound system. Just something to give me good 5.1 when playing a movie (or very rarely, a game).
Thanks,

Whoa whoa whoa.
Hold up here. There are a few very important things
to know about the Mac Pro and Surround Sound.
Mac Pro's (and the Quad G5's for that fact) do not
have PCI Slots. They only have PCI-E (PCI Express)
slots, and thus, there are currently NO sound cards
available that will work in your Mac Pro to provide
surround sound. M-Audio does not make a PCI-E Sound
card, so do not buy a PCI card- it won't fit. There
is nothing you can do about that until M-Audio comes
out with a PCI-E Sound Card for the Mac Pro.
You're right - I checked/verified this with M-Audio's tech support. Bummer.
Your onboard sound jack on the MP will output 2
Channels of audio (left/right). This is not surround
sound.
Didn't think so....
Your onboard Optical jack will output 2 Channels of
Digital audio from any application, game, or movie.
I thought perhaps this optical out would output 5.1 - bummer.
Any DVD that has a Dolby/DTS Surround Sound (5.1)
audio track (most do these days), can be played via
the Mac Pro's Optical port as a Dolby/DTS Audio
stream, but you REQUIRE an external decoder such as
an Amplifier.
I was afraid of that.... Can anyone suggest a good, very small form factor decoder that would fit well under/on a desk or behind a computer, or hidden somewhere out of sight?
This will give you surround sound via a DVD, only
because the sound is pre-encoded in the Dolby/DTS
format.
DVD's are my main concern - I'm not big into games myself.
Games will not be able to "encode on the fly" a
surround sound into a Dolby/DTS audio signal, so you
cannot get surround sound from the Optical port.
As far as a Dolby compatible unit goes for the
outside of the computer, I would suggest the Logitech
Z5500's. They have a nice little control-center that
handles the optical DTS streams and plays 5.1 Sound.
The system is fairly compact, save for the 10" Sub
Woofer that also has the amplifier built into it (but
that can go on the floor).
That answers my previous question from the sounds of it....
Z5500's are your best bet for a cheap, nice setup for
5.1 surround from your Mac Pro as is.
Again, I will mention this again because these forums
are *really* misleading when it comes to Mac
Surround.
-There are no PCI-E Sound cards for the Mac Pro.
-Onboard Optical will output 2 Channels only, unless
you play a Surround DVD Disk with the Dolby/DTS
audio
-Games cannot output a surround signal. Most Mac
games do not support surround regardless of if you
even had the hardware to do it.
-Your only real alternative is a Firewire box that
outputs 5.1 via Analogue cables, but even so, there
are few games that actually support surround on the
Mac.
Excellent info, thanks....
So ether way, there really isn't any point at all to
pursue an external sound card or an internal unit.
I'm sure M-Audio must eventually be releasing a PCI-Ex version of their Revolution card, don't you think?
Just use the Optical port on the Mac Pro, and you
will get 5.1 Surround. That's about it,
unfortunately. There isn't any other solution to
getting surround sound from anything other then a DVD
at this time.
-S'Captain
Excellent post, thank you very much for the obviously accurate & detailed info.
Mike

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