New Mac audio interface

jonbwfc

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Hello all,

I don’t see the answer to this on the Apple product page and AVF seems a good place to ask.

I’m considering buying a Mac Studio (I can justify it :) ) and I would want to connect audio out to a sound bar. The sound bar has HDMI and SPDIF inputs, but I’ll need to use the HDMI out on the Mac for something else. So essentially I’ll need to use the SPDIF port. A USB to SPDIF adapter box is an option which I’d have to buy but I do have a old fibre optic 3.5mm to SPDIF cable hanging around.

Is that likely to work with the Mac Studio’s 3.5mm output? The website simply says “3.5mm headphone jack with advanced support for high-impedance headphones” which is kind of no help at all. I know the Mac Studio isn’t out in the wild yet, but does anyone have experience of recent Mac’s audio outs to know one way or another?

It’s not a deal breaker if it doesn’t, but it would be nice to know if I will need an adapter or not.

Thanks all!
 
I don't believe any current or recent Macs have an optical port in the headphone jacks any more, the feature was dropped from both the laptops and iMacs a few years ago (2017ish?) so I'd have thought it unlikely to be on the new Studio.
 
Thanks for the info. I decided to get an HDMI audio extractor with pass through, that should do the trick. Assuming it will will actually work, we’ll have to find out.
 
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Sounds like you'll have a really nice setup.

Why are you using a soundbar with the Mac? Media consumption?

I combined my computer with an AudioPro C10 via optical and loved it.
 
Hi, I have the same problem (no toslink connector any more on the Mac Studio, therefore no option to digitally connect to my humble Logitech Z-5500 or Z906 surround sets, nor play 5.1 surround on it.

(Usb to toslink is technically also possible but such devices often don't do 5.1 on macOS, and you pay for other options I don't use, because they usually are external sound cards for gamers or hifi enthousiast.)

Which model (HDMI audio extractor with pass through) did you get? And did you run into any downsides?
 

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