Does Toslink support 5.1 ?

[emilianomorgia]

As Far I know it does NOT support 5.1 .

The optical connectior that we have in MacPro's does not support the 5,1 audio .

Seams that TosLink it's made only for 2.0 things .


BTW if you need to play movies with up to 24 audio tracks you need a multy channels Card . ( there are many in the market very low cost )

A friend asked me if Tos Link connector does support 5.1 . As Far i know it does not , anyone does have different information ?

Cheers

Emil

[emilianomorgia]

after few calls to some friends musicians I finally understood how things work , on TOS LINK .

Tos Link DOES support the codec dolby 5.1 .

So for example if you download a movie from http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/oceans13/hd/ wich is dolby 5.1 you will be able to use the tos link to transport the TWO digital audio channels with a 5.1 enconding to a de coder to get the 5.1


But if you want to use the DISCRETE output , wich it mean no encoding , you CAN'T use the TOS LINK .

TOS LINK can only be used for TWO channels , and if those TWO channels are encodec with 5,1 well it support it .

What's it's important is that Catalyst-PM can play both Dolby 5.1 and up to 24 discrete output .

Note to get 24 discrete output you will need a multy channel audio card .

[samsc]

thats a good answer emiliano to your own question- i have lots of audio interfaces so i never needed to use the apple output.

i figured out a while back the apple digital output only did stereo output - not much use really.