PCI Sound Card in Mac Pro?

[z1ross]

I've seen this device from creative recommended for getting 5.1 sound out of your Mac Pro. I guess it uses the optical out to the creative box and then the creative box hooks to the speakers.

http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=4&subcategory=136&product=9468

I went the optical out way with the Z-5500's from logitech - great sound.

That only provides true 5.1 for DVDs (And the build in MacPro Digital out does that without any issue. The Creative device your talking about doesn't get true 5.1 audio from a gmae playing on your mac pro. It's simulated surround or ProLogic Surround sound. To get true 5.1 audio from games to your Z5500's (Which I'm also running), you have to go with something like I have posted about.

Can you go into the "Audio Midi Setup" and do the speaker testing for each individual Speaker??? I can click on all 6 speakers and only the proper speaker responds with the test sound!!

 

[enb141]

with some third party drivers from other guys at voodoolabs you can have your X-Fi Titanium PCie working on mac but there's no DTS Live or DDL and no independient 7.1 or 5.1 speaker setup, no special THX effects and the list continues, so the macs are far behind the windows conter parts in sounds

 

[macdelluser]

There is an option, and it could be considered "PRO".
Get a Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro 4K, new or used.

Intensity Pro 4K | Blackmagic Design

www.blackmagicdesign.com

These are used on ebay and NIB at bhphotovideo.

Besides the video capture capabilities, it has RCA analog stereo in/out, and RCA spdif out only which allows for a decoder like the SOUTHSKY (5.1/2.1 Audio Digital Sound Decoder Converter, Optical SPDIF, Coaxial to 5.1CH 2.1CH Analog Audio $32 12/30/2023).

I only use the RCA in/outs.

However the below is possible:

The SOUTHSKY is surround sound external box you connect to the blackmagic, and I think the audio can pass through and would provide you with +6 analog audio channels (out).

You should theoretically should be able to play back the 6 channels as is with the blackmagic card, unless there is some kind of hardware sound chip filter in the converter, which is possible.

The other way to get another +8 channels of analog audio output from this card is to buy a HDMI LPCM 7.1 PCM 2CH to Analog Surround Sound Audio Decoder- 4K Version. It is $58 as of 12/30/23.

So in theory, each card could provide more channels of output audio.

I am using this card in a Dell r720 server. I pass through the card to a proxmox VM running MacOs Monterey using an OLD version of their drivers only: Blackmagic_Desktop_Video_12.7.1.dmg

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I just purchased a new Mac Pro D); however, I was a little disappointed with the sound card for a $3000 machine. I was previously using an older home-built PC with a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 PCI sound card. Would I be able to swap this sound card into my Mac Pro? I'm not looking to improve the sound quality so much; rather I'd just like to use all of my 5.1 speakers. I figure I've paid for 5.1 speakers, so I may as well use all of them instead of the 2.1 I'm limited to with the ports built in on the Mac Pro.

Is this at all possible?

So one thing I never realized is apple sets up audio devices to bad defaults. And the defaults are set, in part, in the Audio Midi Setup.app picks bad defaults for almost all output devices.

And second, you must run the apple Audio Midi Setup.app and in there, find the KEF's and max out the settings to be 2ch 24-bit 192khz output (for the LS50W1), so as to reduce resampling.

Often the Midi setup.app output is mismatched to the max output of the output device. What that often means is the device will re-sample the output, further degrading it. I found a really big acoustical quality difference after changing the settings for my KEFs.

Perhaps oddly it was most pronounced in mediocre sound quality recordings. So if it was an uncompressed full CD quality the down step isn't as pronounced as it was on a 128k MP3 file. I think the reason is it's a marginal recurring to start with and resampling it again really beats up that output and is more pronounced.

Simply changing that setting may make a big difference depending on your output device (particularly if they have their own amp/DAC and cause another resample vs just pumping out the straight stream).