OS X.1 & Surround Sound

x704x704
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
A while ago Maccentral had an article saying that 10.1 had some sort of Surround Sound Frameworks. Does anyone know anything about this? Is Apple going to impliment Surround Sound through the CPU like they do with stereo sound? Or is it the frameworks for a 3rd Party card :confused: . Any "Insiders" know what type of attitude Apple has towards Surround Sound? Do they care?



If they are going to have it through the CPU how would you connect Surround Sound speakers? I assume you can't do it through the regular jack right? Would USB have enough bandwidth? What about FIrewire? Are there/will there be any Firewire speakers?



Currently I have a SBL:Mac & since it doesn't look like Creative's ever going to write OS X drivers I'm just curious as to what options we may have down the road as mac users.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    adam11adam11 Posts: 163member
    The only firewire speakers I have ever heard of are at <a href="http://www.softacoustik.com"; target="_blank">www.softacoustik.com</a> here is a blurb from their product section*

    Quote

    1394 HI-FI DIGITAL ACTIVE LOUDSPEAKERS (SA 2.0)



    Intended for near field studio reference monitoring and discriminating audiophile, the SA 2.0 is optimized for two-way operation. The electronic system is contained in a monolithic magnesium enclosure with inherent heat sink capability that fits inside the enclosure.



    Network connectivity not only makes it possible to feed digital audio signals, but also to control the peripheral, which can respond to commands, monitor operation status and accept upgrades via the Internet through the PC and the network.



    Being digital, the audio peripheral uses Digital Signal Processing for crossover and drivers equalization and can be used to compensate for loudspeakers distortions and correct for loudspeakers/room acoustic behaviors.

    UNquote





    Surround/Dolby/dTS is important as MAC will never make it as a HTPC (HTMAC?) until these sound output options are offered . I guess that there are other problems with the DVD player in OS X (like scaling up for TV) that need to be addressed as well.



    Cheers

    adam
  • Reply 2 of 12
    falconfalcon Posts: 458member
    I consider this issue a major fumble on Apples part. I have a surround sound set-up on my PC, and quite frankly I couldnt live without it. 80% of my time on the comp is surfing the internet while listenting to music. And the surround system just makes it a beautifull thing indeed. It really isnt all that hard to have a surround sound system. Just have two output jacks for crying out loud. For a platform that prides itself of multimedia not having the capability to do surround sound out of the box is a bit of a slip up no?



    [ 12-06-2001: Message edited by: Falcon ]</p>
  • Reply 3 of 12
    kukukuku Posts: 254member
    You really should think about what you post. You are talking about creative soundblaster cards here, not the OS.



    There is a BIG difference between hardware driven and software driven effects.



    IBM compatible PCs by their nature uses some kind of sound card, apple has something subtlety different.



    There is a creative soundblaster card for mac, which sadly doesn't have osx drivers.



    OF course if you want surround sound, it's not that hard, just expensive. Heck I can add surround sound to a phonograph record disk player.



    ~Kuku
  • Reply 4 of 12
    x704x704 Posts: 276member
    [quote]Originally posted by Kuku:

    <strong>You are talking about creative soundblaster cards here, not the OS.

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    Did you read my post at all? <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> Yes I mentioned Creative but my main question was about OS 10.1 & the Surround Sound frameworks that it has, not "why doesn't my SBL:Mac work in OS X".



    [quote]<strong>

    There is a BIG difference between hardware driven and software driven effects.

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    I realize that & I think I demostrated that in my post ... not sure why you think I don't understand the difference ... OS 9 & X use the CPU (software) to do thier Stereo ... Apparently 10.1 has some sort of Surround Sound frameworks, I was wondering if this was for the CPU to handle (software) or if it was frameworks for a 3rd Party (Hardware) company to plug in too.



    [quote]<strong>There is a creative soundblaster card for mac, which sadly doesn't have osx drivers.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Again, did you read my post? I said I have one & I'm quite aware it doesn't have OS X drivers, that's why I'm interested in the 10.1 Surround Sound frameworks .... :confused:



    [quote]<strong>You really should think about what you post.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    One of us certainly should <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />



    Edit: Added a bit



    [ 12-06-2001: Message edited by: X704 ]</p>
  • Reply 5 of 12
    kukukuku Posts: 254member
    X704, Your post was a little hard to understand, but then so was mine I guess.



    My post was directed at "Falcon" who boaster his PC can wow this and that.



    On your post, The Surround sound frame work is probably for developers like game makers to call. This also means that unless someone write an audio program, that can call those then convert a data file(say Mp3) to properly use surround sound. It's pointless.



    Apple would be going much above and beyond to attempt to try this and also take a good amount of CPU.



    The logical option here is hardware, i.e SBL. SBL doesn't need to call the framework to my guess since all it needs is drivers to catch the audio, and then do what it has to in hardware, and output.



    Games are slightly different in that, it can probably use the framework to manually direct audio. i.e. on a home entertainment set, do footsteps to the forward left, gun fire on the back right, and alternate music with the base others.



    USB and higher speakers are digital(I think) so there is no real reason to not be able to do anything you want(Surroundsound) as it's just another device. Not at all like a compress audio jack, which is limited technogy.



    Just making some guesses here, but it's probably somewhat logical. After all most surround sound are REALLY just EFFECTS(Like adding echo to a song). True surround sound has to directed.



    ~Kuku



    [ 12-07-2001: Message edited by: Kuku ]</p>
  • Reply 6 of 12
    x704x704 Posts: 276member
    [quote]Originally posted by Kuku:

    <strong>X704, Your post was a little hard to understand, but then so was mine I guess.



    My post was directed at "Falcon" who boaster his PC can wow this and that.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Thanks for clearing that up, perhaps I could've been more clear in my question (although I thought I was relatively clear ...).



    [quote]<strong>On your post, The Surround sound frame work is probably for developers like game makers to call. This also means that unless someone write an audio program, that can call those then convert a data file(say Mp3) to properly use surround sound. It's pointless.



    Apple would be going much above and beyond to attempt to try this and also take a good amount of CPU.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    So your saying Apple's trying to do surround sound through software right?



    The logical option here is hardware, i.e SBL. SBL doesn't need to call the framework to my guess since all it needs is drivers to catch the audio, and then do what it has to in hardware, and output.



    Games are slightly different in that, it can probably use the framework to manually direct audio. i.e. on a home entertainment set, do footsteps to the forward left, gun fire on the back right, and alternate music with the base others.



    [quote]<strong>USB and higher speakers are digital(I think) so there is no real reason to not be able to do anything you want(Surroundsound) as it's just another device. Not at all like a compress audio jack, which is limited technogy.



    Just making some guesses here, but it's probably somewhat logical. After all most surround sound are REALLY just EFFECTS(Like adding echo to a song). True surround sound has to directed.

    ]</strong><hr></blockquote>



    USB is digital (just confirming). I think you misunderstood me a bit. I'm talking about real (directional, 5.1 Surround sound, ie. 4 speakers + subwoofer) surround sound, not simulated (ie. 2 speakers). This is why I was asking if USB could handle it because of all the extra bandwidth it'd need to supply 4 speakers with 5.1 Surround Sound.



    The 5.1 Surround Sound Framework is also what I was eluding to regarding OS 10.1 (not the stereo/simulated surround sound that we've had since OS 8 or so, rather the real thing). Understand :confused: . Hopefully you can provide a little more info.
  • Reply 7 of 12
    kukukuku Posts: 254member
    USB is a tricky thing... There is a share quality there so complete bandwidth that may not be there must be kept in mind.



    Certainly, there should be enough to do surround sound and also can be play around to various general techniques that can be used to save bandwidth also.



    I think the more general problem here is just cpu overhead to make it worthwhile. A framework is just calling, to actually pump all that through USB must be taxing.



    I know on my own OSX, a USB HD taxes about 10% of cpu. Which isn't exactly bad... but for something so often tapped as sound...



    Well better then windows which seems to really kill high bandwidth USB usage.



    ~Kuku
  • Reply 8 of 12
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    [quote]Originally posted by Kuku:

    <strong>high bandwidth USB usage.</strong><hr></blockquote>





    bahahahhaah!



    that exists?
  • Reply 9 of 12
    falconfalcon Posts: 458member
    [quote]My post was directed at "Falcon" who boaster his PC can wow this and that.<hr></blockquote>



    LOL! The fact that my PC can do surround directly from the box is far from a 'wow' factor. In fact its giving me hell right now *kicks piece of shit. The only thing im ragging on is the fact that Apple dosnt have the ability built into the comp to simply do surround sound. Just the 2 jacks. I could care less about EAX or proc usage. The ability should be there. And dont tell me that having 2 audio output jacks on the comp is very R&D heavy and expensive to integrate.



    Of course you could just hook it up to an amp, but what if I dont have a free one lying around? What if I want to use OS X and thusly cant use SB Live?



    [ 12-07-2001: Message edited by: Falcon ]</p>
  • Reply 10 of 12
    kukukuku Posts: 254member
    [quote]

    bahahahhaah!



    that exists?

    <hr></blockquote>



    *blink*

    Relatively speaking I guess heh. Bad choice of words.



    That's like surfing the internet through a 10mbit connection, when usb can easily double that heh...



    Falcon,

    have you ever wonder what those 2 jacks are REALLY connected to? Try a sound card, most probably Soundblaster.



    ~Kuku
  • Reply 11 of 12
    kidtexaskidtexas Posts: 1member
    Last I read in the Core Audio documents for OS X was that multi channel audio was built into the system. I think the example was that if you had HARDWARE system capable of 8ins/8outs (available on any number of recording IO packages) then you could direct 6 discrete channels to outs 1-6, a stereo mix to 7-8, etc. Now, with that kind of flexible power, I would hope it could do 5.1 DD. But who knows until some of these "features" actually show up.
  • Reply 12 of 12
    falconfalcon Posts: 458member
    [quote]have you ever wonder what those 2 jacks are REALLY connected to? Try a sound card, most probably Soundblaster.<hr></blockquote>



    Actualy in my case its a Diamond MX300 Aureal board.
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