The output sound line

Hello,
I'm interrested to change my Macbook 13" Unibody for the new Macbook Air. But i'm using my current Macbook as a Media Center with a HDMI and optical connection to my A/V amplifier. Apparently, the new Macbook Air haven't the optical output sound line, just an analogic connector. So I wonder if there is an external sound card using USB connection with just an optical output (i'm not looking for expessive professional sound cards).
Thanks

Ok I have semi good news... The second sound card that I bought seems to be capable of doing it hardware wise but the driver doesn't seem to support it...
I mainly use a player called Plex (http://www.plexapp.com) to play my movies. It allows me to "Force" digital output... With that option enabled I have full 5.1 channel sound on both AC3 and DTS. However when I don't force it it uses Stereo because it THINKS the card can't handle more.
I have also tried Quicktime which has no force option -> Stereo only. And VLC which has a force option for "Dolby Surround" but the result is also -> Stereo...
So this card works if and only if you are using Plex to play back your movies...
It is the Terratec Aureon Dual USB. It is a small USB stick with the same kind of optical plug that the MacBook Pros use...
This is how it looks:
http://umpcmid.com/photo/terratec-aureon-dual-usb-2.jpg
On the Terratec site:
http://www.terratec.net/en/products/AureonDual_USB9842.html
Moreover:
I have also found the following card of which several people on the internet claim that it is capable of full pass through both on Windows and Mac OS, but it seems unavailable in Europe. It's the Turtle Beach Micro II (not Amigo II!!!) However the Turtle Beach Website claims that pass-through is NOT available in Mac OS. It can be found on Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Beach-AudioAdvantageMicroII-Micro-Sound/dp/B0036VO4 X4/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1287880531&sr=8-1
If anyone knows of another solution, let us know!

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I cannot hear any songs or movies from my laptop speakers - the headphone port works and a red light is showing? The output sound settings are showing as digital optical only? Any ideas :)

I cannot hear any songs or movies from my laptop speakers - the headphone port works and a red light is showing from the port? The output sound settings are showing as digital optical only? I used the headphones in the laptop for the first time yesterday and have had this problem ever since. Any ideas

The internal switch in the audio output port is stuck. Try inserting the earphone plug a few times. If no success, try jiggling a tooth pick inside in order to trip the switch.. If still no success, have the technicians at the Apple store genius bar do it for you.
Ciao.

Changing the output sound device when a headset is plugged in?

I wanted to replace my clunky old Logitech USB headset with a bluetooth one and then noticed - hey! - there is a headset jack. So I tested a Skype call with an extra iPhone headset I had lying around and it worked great.
The only problem is there doesn't seem to be a way to switch to the internal speaker of the MBP when not using the headset, which is most of the time, unless I physically unplug the headset. The Option+click volume feature also won't recognize the internal speakers unless I unplug the headset.
It's a minor nuisance, but there is the extra wear and tear. And it's sort of a nuisance to have to quickly plug the headset in if a call comes in. So I was wondering if there was some recommended tool for doing this kind of quick switching when the headset is plugged in all the time.
Thanks,
Doug

The only thing I don't like about the iPhone headset solution is that the earplugs are uncomfortable, and keep falling out. I basically don't like things stuck in my ear. So I am thinking of buying an actual over-the-ears headset to plug in to the headset port.
A couple of questions:
- Is there any reason at all to go USB headset instead? It seems like a waste of a USB port since there is a headset jack.
- Is there any way of switching the output sound back to the speakers while the headset is plugged in? Or do I have to physically unplug it each time it is not in use for a Skype call (which is the only time I would use it)?
Thanks,
doug

The output sound was somehow muted and grayed, so that I can't uncheck. Any idea how this happened or how i can undo it?

The output sound was somehow muted and grayed so that I can't uncheck it. Any idea how this happened and how it can be undone?

Hi, and welcome to Apple Support Communities.
Which exact iBook model is it?
You can choose from this list:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/ibook/index-ibook.html
You could try resetting the PRAM and see if that helps.

I lost the output sound on my ibookG4

So I just installed Leopard on my ibookG4 and now my OUTPUT device for sound is no longer working. when i turn my computer on it makes the normal opening sound, but when i try to listen to itunes or anything that has sound it's dead. i looked at my system preferences section and i cannot select an output device and there is no device selected. can anyone help?

this has been happening to a lot of leopard users, including me. however after installing 10.5.1 I haven't had any more problems. however if you are still having problems you need to zap your PRAM. To do this you need to turn your computer off, then hold down apple, option, p and r and then while holding those down turn your computer back on and continue holding those keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the start up noise. this should fix it. If you haven't installed 10.5.1 do that and then you should have no problems. hope this helps
derek osterloh

My headphones have stopped working on my macbook pro. they are plugged in and dont even register on the output sound

i need help!!!!!!

Do you get sound from the internal speakers? If you hold down the opt/alt key and click the speaker icon on the menu bar, what options do you have under 'Output Device'? Look into the headphone socket, can you see a red light?

Output sound level from gramophone and from computer should be the same

Dear friends,
Why the output sound level isn't equal if we listen the LP directly from the gramophone (AUX1) or from the computer during the recording the track on the computer?
We are using The E-MU 0404 USB 2.0 Audio/MIDI Interface:
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/proaudio/emu-0404-usb.html
http://www.emu.com/products/product.asp?product=10447&nav=features
and we have connected E-MU with the (gramohone) speakers through the headphone output on the E-MU and turn the headphone level to the maximum, but the sound level is still lower from the same speakers.
If we compare the track after the recording with the LP on the gramphone is the level of the sound the same/equal.
So we need to have all three sound levels equal:
-from the LP form the gramophone
-from the computer during the recording
-from our track on the hard disk after the recording
Thank you for your answer.

function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
Connecting loudspeakers to the headphone output on the E-mu sounds like completely the wrong thing to do altogether - you should
only connect headphones to a headphone output, and nothing else at all.
We will buy the cable as you mentioned and connect it in the line level (S/PDIF).
function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
Almost certainly you will need to adjust the monitoring levels in Patchmix to get this the way you want it
Then we will try to adjust the monitoring levels in Patch (I will report if and how did we manage it).
Our equiptment is:
·       turntable Stabi Kuzma audio komponents ( http://www.kuzma.si/AmplioCMS2/public/EnterPublic.cms2?langId=60&request_locale=en_US )
·        Rotel Phono equalizer RQ-970BX,
·        Rotel Stereo integrated amplifaier RA-9858X
·       speakers JMlab Focal Daline 3.1 (nom. impendance 8 Ω, max. power 75 W)

Output sound distortion when USB Mic Connected

Hi everyone,
Really appreciate anyone’s help on this sound distortion problem.
I have been using the new 2014 iMac 27' for last 8 Months, bought Brand New, and recently updated to Yosemite. Everything worked fine including recording, until this update.
I'm using Blue Yeti USB Mic for recording, and few days after the update I was trying to record in GarageBand and the output sound (via headphone connected to USB MIc) started to distort and then suddenly dropped the bitrate/ sound and I could only hear some clicks. I reinstalled the GargeBand, still its the same distortion happens. The sound gets back to normal, only for few seconds, after I unplug the USB cable from the Mic device. And I tried changing the bit rate and again sounds starts to drop after few sec. This happens only when I connect the Blue Yeti USB Mic and sound output from the Mic itself. Same thing happens with iTunes as well. Output sound from Internal mic and speakers are working fine as normal.
I tried connecting the USB Mic to my Windows laptop and its working fine with the Cubase 5 without any problem. So the problem is with the output sound, when external Mic connected.
I don’t know the solution for this. Have checked on every single blog/ thread, sill couldn’t find the answer I’m looking for, to fix this.
It would be great if you have any kind of a solution for the same.
Info : FYI
Mac
OS X Yosemite: Version 10.10.2
iMac (27-inch, Late 2013)
Processor : 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5
Hard-drive : 1 TB SATA Disk
Ram: 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M 1024 MB
Built-in Output:
Default System Output Device:       Yes
Manufacturer:                                  Apple Inc.
Output Channels:                             2
Current SampleRate:                      48000
Transport:                                        Built-in
Yeti Stereo Microphone:
Default Input Device:                      Yes
Default Output Device:                    Yes
Input Channels:                               2
Manufacturer:                                 Blue Microphones
Output Channels:                            2
Current SampleRate:                      48000
Transport:

Nope. The larger buffer didn't work. What did work was running a cord out of the 1/4-inch jack from the direct box to a 1/4-to-1/8-inch adapter and then into the mic/line-in jack on my computer. I set GarageBand to use the built-in line-in and had no static problems. It's a stopgap until this gets fixed.
A post by LinuxMercedes on Oct. 3 at http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8158914 may provide a solution.

Output sound volume

The output sound volume on my system (about one month old imac) sounds low. As I remember my old G5 imac playing sounds on a webpage with system volume (the top line on the screen) and browser volume (set within the browser) at a very load volume.
Now, I have set both volume controls to max to hear the sound at all.
Is there some way I can test the sound?

Hi, go to MIDI SetUp (Applications-Utilities) or Spotlight Midi!
Look for the Configure Speakers Box ~ you can check out the sound from each speaker...
(A recent post, suggested keeping the Mac volume @ Low & setting the external speakers to High)
....L

Help with timing, input from Daq, output sound

Hi
I am a student member of OSA, working on a laser listener project to be used in examples for high schools students. It is a pretty old and simple experiment but something I think students would be into. {any suggestions for other experiments anyone might have I would love to hear}
I read a voltage from a Daq off a reciever circuit, that signal is noisey so I filter it for the human voice range, 60Hz - 2000Hz. Then that filtered signal goes to the play waveform express VI. It works but the snag is I keep getting a "beeping" in the output sound, I believe this is from the loop cycling. I have thought of something like a master/slave loops, storing the data in an array then waiting a sec or two and playing the sound from this data so I dont have to wait on the Daq to acquire new data. Any help or suggestions are greatly apprciated.
This is a rough version sorry about the mess. I think it should also be noted that if the "Time Duration" is larger that 0.02 then that makes the number of samples larger than what the Daq can handle.
Thank you very much in advance for all of the help and your time.
Jason
Attachments:
OSA example.vi ‏42 KB

Hi Jason,
I took a look at what is happening in the play waveform express VI and the issue may be related to starting/stopping the sound card every time the loop iterates, similar to what I suggested with the DAQmx VIs in my previous post. To look into the code behind an express VI, you should copy the express VI to another section of your code or to another VI completely, because once you show the block diagram for it, you will not be able to use the express VI configuration dialog anymore for that instance of the VI. Once you copy the play waveform express VI, right click on the copy and select "Open Front Panel." Then, navigate to the block diagram and keep opening the subVIs until you find the "Simple Write" VI (see below for a screenshot of this VI). Here, you will see that there is a "Sound Output configure" VI as well as a "Sound Output Clear" VI. Since these are within the while loop of your top level VI, the "beeping" in your output may be caused by the constant configuring and stopping of the sound card with these VIs. What I suggest is that you use the code in the express VI as an example to code your own sound output vi that is configured once outside the while loop and stopped once after the while loop. Hope this helps!

Change Output Sound Device

Is there anyway to change the output sound device in iTunes without going through System Preference?
I have an iMac with built-in Speakers, and a 5.1 Griffin Firewave over Firewire. I want my music to come through my external speakers but I don't need my system sounds to come through those, right now I can only change it through System preference and haven't found a way to divide them up.
This is do-able in the Apple DVD Player... any thoughts for this function in iTunes? Is there some place I can put this in a suggestion box if it's not already a function?

It is a great pity you are using Leopard. Up until Tiger there was a great little free app called Detour that let you assign separate audio channels for different apps. You could Google "Detour" and see if there is another utility that will work for Leopard?
There is also an app Soundflowerbed that lets you route the output from one program and port it into another. Unfortunately, those programs must have 'audio channel recognition' (not a technical term - I just mean that they must be able to take an input and deliver an output, e.g. like GarageBand). iTunes doesn't.

Any automation for output sound level conflict?

I just upgraded my home computer to a shiny new(er) G5 iMac, running 10.5.5. I don't know which of those are the necessary conditions for a change in output sound level behavior that I'm trying to tame. I have generally kept my cordless headphones permanently plugged in, rendering the old machine (G3 iMac, 10.4.11) silent to the outer (quiet) world of my house, including when it does a scheduled startup in the morning with some people still asleep. This worked well until the new machine arrived. Now the machine is still silent (outside of the headphones) all the time except when it powers up -- the startup chord now plays through the speakers regardless of a plug in the output jack. The problem comes with the output sound level. For headphones, the overall sound level needs to be at maximum. But the overall sound level seems to be the only volume control on the startup tones, and it is then at wherever it was set when the machine was last shut down. So if I forget to run the sound level down to 1 or zero before shutting down, the startup blasts everyone out of bed! So: I now have a sticky note on the iMac reminding me to turn down the sound at shutdown, which will usually work. My question: is there a more elegant way? Is there some way to automate the turning down at logout time, say? I'm inexperienced at scripting, but happy to learn. Any and all suggestions appreciated!

There were no responses to my problem, so I will post a resolution. I dug a little, and found there are several add-ons out there for this problem.
One is http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~arcana/software.en.html, which has the elegant interface of an added system preference pane. However, it is in a beta release, and temporary administrator authentication does not work. As far as I can tell, in order to get it to work, you have to login and run with administrator privileges, never a good idea. Maybe someday this app will work.
But I hit paydirt with an app called Psst, http://www.satsumac.com/Psst.php. This does just what I wanted. The interface isn't as elegant; you just run the app and make your settings, then quit. It leaves a daemon process running at every startup that does just what you want: it saves the global audio volume and resets the volume to the Psst setting at shutdown. Then at the following startup, the startup chime sounds at whatever the Psst setting was, then the audio volume is set back to the saved value. You can just forget it's there, having once set startup volume level.
Too bad that Apple didn't build this in the latest Mac OS, but Psst seems to fill the gap.

Output Sound Problem

Has anyone noticed that output sound on the itunes is distorted and after opening and playing the same file in QuickTime that the problem is gone?
I am using iTunes to open and play a sound file, say an imported CD song, and the sound is distorted.
Checking the preferences option to perform a Sound Check helps but does not completely solve the problem. After opening Quicktime and opening the same file, the output sound is fine, in both applications?
It seems that all was well before my update of the applications and the Firmware. Should I be suspicious of that as the culprit or is this some other symtom of impending doom?
The sound problem is on internal speakers, earbuds, or a set of sennheiser headphones.
itunes 7.0 updated a few days ago
QuickTime 7.1.3 updated recently
SMC Firmware update a few days ago
White MacBook 2Gz Mac OS X (10.4.7) First Mac

I might have the same problem. Playing audio occasionally becomes very scratchy, to the point that I have to stop listening. It usually lasts a few minutes. It's maddening.
It happens via the internal speakers or through headphones.
Occurrence isn't very consistent. I notice it most in iTunes (v7), but that's probably only because I play most audio in iTunes. I've had it happen now when playing video in VLC, too. It seems to only happen after playing audio continuously for at least 10 minutes. I haven't been able to reproduce it at will, so I haven't bothered taking it to my local Genius bar yet (at least not for this problem).
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.8)

My configuration audio "output" is only numerique and I would like listen to audio by integrated loudspeaker. I can't use the keys "sound on my computer. If I click on I have a icon "forbiden". Can you help me

my configuration audio "output" is only numerique and I would like listen to audio by integrated loudspeaker. I can't use the keys "sound on my computer. If I click on I have a icon "forbiden". Can you help me

Si vous tappez sûr le cle <<option>> et cliquez vôtre souris de l'icon de haut-parleur
de le haut partie de sa Desktop, vous pouvez voir les choix pour le son: les haut-parleurs internales, Line out et Digital Out. C'est tout ! Ou cliquez de la Pomme a gauche, choissisez Préferences, et Son, et voila..... le meme chose.....
Merci d'avoir choisi Apple
John B

Alsa: reroute sound output to line in?

Hello,
i've been on this for a week now, not getting anywhere.
but now i'm determined to crack the nut that is alsa.
a familiar problem: i want to use alsa's sound output - pcm or master - internally.
i have set up a loopback device now; it works with e.g. recordmydesktop, but the application i'm interested in seems to only chose the first capture channel of the default soundcard :-(
(it's sndpeek).
so, is it possible to duplicate & reroute the default card's pcm or master channel back into the default card's Line channel (Line in)?
of course i'm open to other suggestions.
thanks.
current .asoundrc (creates a 2nd sound card that i cannot access with sndpeek, but works otherwise)
pcm.!default { type asym
playback.pcm "LoopAndReal"
#capture.pcm "looprec"
capture.pcm "hw:0,0"
pcm.looprec { type hw
card "Loopback"
device 1
subdevice 0
pcm.LoopAndReal { type plug
slave.pcm mdev
route_policy "duplicate"
pcm.mdev { type multi
slaves.a.pcm pcm.MixReale
slaves.a.channels 2
slaves.b.pcm pcm.MixLoopback
slaves.b.channels 2
bindings.0.slave a
bindings.0.channel 0
bindings.1.slave a
bindings.1.channel 1
bindings.2.slave b
bindings.2.channel 0
bindings.3.slave b
bindings.3.channel 1
pcm.MixReale { type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave { pcm "hw:0,0"
rate 48000
#rate 44100
periods 128
period_time 0
period_size 1024 # must be power of 2
buffer_size 8192
pcm.MixLoopback { type dmix
ipc_key 1025
slave { pcm "hw:Loopback,0,0"
rate 48000
#rate 44100
periods 128
period_time 0
period_size 1024 # must be power of 2
buffer_size 8192
- copied over from here.
the soundcard is a basic laptop intel chip.
$ dmesg|grep -i intel
[ 1.037761] i915 0000:00:02.0: fb0: inteldrmfb frame buffer device
[ 19.315080] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: irq 44 for MSI/MSI-X
[ 20.408741] input: HDA Intel Headphone as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input10
[ 20.408940] input: HDA Intel Line as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input11
[ 20.409100] input: HDA Intel Mic as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input12
thanks for any advice!
Last edited by ondoho (2013-11-07 19:37:46)

so, is it possible to duplicate & reroute the default card's pcm or master channel back into the default card's Line channel (Line in)?
If you're talking about the analog audio path the answer is maybe. But fair warning, you'll be spending many more hours (maybe) getting it to work while wallowing real deep in today's integrated audio hardware and ALSA if you want to use this method.
the soundcard is a basic laptop intel chip.
This is the first thing you need to learn. That chip is generic and found on almost all modern x86 motherboards. Where the audio magic actually happens is the "codec" chip and the vendor/model varies. The HDA Intel chip merely "talks" to the codec chip which sits "behind" the HDA Intel chip on the bus.
So the first step is to figure out which codec chip is installed and then determine if you can "manually" connect the "virtual wires" inside the codec to make a connection from the output (play) to the input (capture).
One way that you might find which codec you have is to enter:
less /proc/asound/cardX/codec#Y
where "X" is your card number and "Y" is the codec number
Just look for "Codec:" near the top. Also, there's gobs of other good info in that file that will be used in a moment.
The codec chip contains what I call "virtual wires" that connect it's internal components (amplifiers, mixers, ADCs, DACs, etc). ALSA gathers info from BIOS and determines which connections to enable, but I've found that most codec chips have many connections that are not enabled. More importantly in this case, I've also found that many chips have a connection from the output (play) to the input (capture), it's just not enabled... and that may (or may not) also be the case for your chip. I've been able to enable the internal connections in my chips to create a hardware loopback so that Line Out is connected to Line In... so what you hear in the speakers is also sent to ALSA's capture interface... and the capture level is independently adjustable.
So how would you inspect and change these "virtual wires"? With a program called hda-analyzer. It will use the data in the /proc/asound directory (and more) to show you how your codec is wired in both text and graphics form, along with allowing you to change it. One way to get it is by running this command:
wget -O run.py http://www.alsa-project.org/hda-analyzer.py
I'll leave it to you to figure out which dependency packages need to be installed, but once you install them, run:
python2 run.py
where it will download yet more code (possibly in the /dev/shm directory) and will barf because you either need to install yet more dependency packages to run hda_analyzer.py, or simply because it tried to automatically run it using python3 (because it's also a python2 program, so run it manually like: "python2 hda_analyzer.py").
Once you get it running, the confusion factor will probably kick into high gear. Take your time and poke around. Get your bearings somewhat by clicking on "Graph" to display the wiring layout and hover your mouse over the square blocks and the wires. As I said in a previous post, if you can download the datasheet for your codec chip, it may help if it includes an internal diagram:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=147208
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 3#p1089243
Any changes you make to the "wiring" are instantaneous (so you can try it while making changes) and will go away on a reboot. Clicking "Exp" will create a python script of your changes that you can run later to make those connections again from the command line.
Good luck, and I'll check back to help if I can find the time... that is if you're up for such a major challenge.
Last edited by pigiron (2013-11-10 04:31:25)

The output sound line

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