How do I enable surround sound on my Mac Mini (Late 2012)?

[felixen]

Hi guys.

I just bought an LG OLED B7 TV and I have my Mac Mini (Late 2012) hooked up to it. For 5.1 surround sound I have a Pioneer VSX 1131.

I have my Mac Mini connected with HDMI to the TV, and the TV connects with an optical cable to my Pioneer receiver.

This very same setup lets me get surround sound on my PS4, but I can't figure out how to get it to work on my Mac Mini (and my Nintendo Switch for that matter). I can only get sound from my 2 front speakers.

Any tips?

 

[fischersd]

Your Mini needs to go to one of the HDMI IN ports on your Pioneer receiver (as it's a source), not the TV.

Your TV is via HDMI out (obviously) from the receiver. Why do you need the optical connection? (is it supposed to provide better dynamics than the HDMI audio?)

I've only used that for devices into the receiver that didn't support HDMI audio.

So, you're not using any of the speakers in the TV then, right? They're all connected to the receiver?

Did you do the audio setup in the receiver? If your receiver came with a microphone that plugs into the front, you place that in the middle of your viewing area, it'll do a sound check with all of your speakers and adjust the levels for the room.

 

[felixen]

Your Mini needs to go to one of the HDMI IN ports on your Pioneer receiver (as it's a source), not the TV.
---> I guess that would work since that's the setup I used to have. I'm just worried I'd be compromising image quality if it goes through my receiver first, rather than directly into the TV (as mentioned below regarding my PS4)

Your TV is via HDMI out (obviously) from the receiver. Why do you need the optical connection? (is it supposed to provide better dynamics than the HDMI audio?)
---> I initially had my Mini connected with HDMI to the receiver, and the receiver connected to the TV. But when I got my new TV, I found out that in order to get HDR on my PS4, I couldn't have the image go through the receiver - so I had to connect my PS4 directly to the TV. I figured I might generally get better quality on all my devices that way, so I connected all my stuff directly to the TV, and I'm then using the optical connection to get sound from the TV to my receiver. On my PS4, this works perfectly and I get surround sound (note: at first it didn't work on PS4 because a sound setting was set to "optical cable". I changed that to "HDMI" instead, and voila, my surround worked. However, the PS4 is connected with optical, not HDMI)

I've only used that for devices into the receiver that didn't support HDMI audio.

So, you're not using any of the speakers in the TV then, right? They're all connected to the receiver?
---> That's right, I only use sound from my speakers. Never from the TV, although I can easily enable that in my TV settings.

Did you do the audio setup in the receiver? If your receiver came with a microphone that plugs into the front, you place that in the middle of your viewing area, it'll do a sound check with all of your speakers and adjust the levels for the room.
---> Yeah, I have that microphone and actually just used it a few days ago to make sure that my center and rear speakers weren't broken. This was before I got my PS4 to work, of course.

Thanks for the nice reply. I'll answer your questions inside the quote above

 

[fischersd]

Ok, just took a look at the specs for your unit. It says that it supports HDMI passthrough up to 4k/60Hz, including HDR. So, yes, you really should be using it as it's intended - all sources to your HDMI IN ports, then to the TV via HDMI OUT.
You should contact Pioneer support to get it worked out why you're not able to get HDR passthrough - you should be able to, per what they've stated is supported. (possibly it matters which HDMI IN it's connected to)

Your TV wasn't designed to be a passthrough for a 7.2 channel receiver's audio I'd suspect that why you're only getting stereo output from the mini is because the mini did a query to the TV for it's audio support over HDMI and the TV answered stereo. The PS4 is likely used to dealing with devices that act as passthroughs (being newer), so it pushes out whatever you tell it to do.

Me, I think you should be getting the most out of that receiver. Get Pioneer to resolve the PS4 HDR issue, so you can enjoy the best AV experience (well, even though we don't have 4k/60Hz mini's....yet)

 

[redheeler]

You might have to configure it using Audio MIDI Setup (in Applications > Utilities). Select the output and hit "Configure Speakers", then at the top there will be a dropdown next to "Configuration" which should give you the option for 5.1 surround.

 

[felixen]

You might have to configure it using Audio MIDI Setup (in Applications > Utilities). Select the output and hit "Configure Speakers", then at the top there will be a dropdown next to "Configuration" which should give you the option for 5.1 surround.

This looked promising, but once I got inside "Configure Speakers", I was only able to select Surround 2.0. So it's like the Mini can't see I have 5 speakers set up

Ok, just took a look at the specs for your unit. It says that it supports HDMI passthrough up to 4k/60Hz, including HDR. So, yes, you really should be using it as it's intended - all sources to your HDMI IN ports, then to the TV via HDMI OUT.
You should contact Pioneer support to get it worked out why you're not able to get HDR passthrough - you should be able to, per what they've stated is supported. (possibly it matters which HDMI IN it's connected to)

Your TV wasn't designed to be a passthrough for a 7.2 channel receiver's audio I'd suspect that why you're only getting stereo output from the mini is because the mini did a query to the TV for it's audio support over HDMI and the TV answered stereo. The PS4 is likely used to dealing with devices that act as passthroughs (being newer), so it pushes out whatever you tell it to do.

Me, I think you should be getting the most out of that receiver. Get Pioneer to resolve the PS4 HDR issue, so you can enjoy the best AV experience (well, even though we don't have 4k/60Hz mini's....yet)

That might be the way to go, thanks. I've contacted Pioneer about it. Too bad though, I was enjoying using my new Magic Remote to control the channels rather than using the Pioneer remote