Jump to content

[How to] Have sound on all of your speakers.


macgirl
 Share

55 posts in this topic

Recommended Posts

Ok you have more than 2 speakers but few movies and songs are 5.1 and you wish to have Speaker fill excitment :P

 

Before you begin you need to download and install XCode (at least its Audio Applications) Soundflower: linky original maker: http://www.cycling74.com/downloads/soundflower

 

Soundflower is a system extension (or kext) that allows applications to pass audio to other applications.

 

Reboot and begin with Auio Midi Setup and add an Agregate Device (Audio Menu or with Command-Shift-A keys)

put all you speakers there and one of the soundflower devices (when it is installed it will show on your Sound Decives as Soundflower(2ch) and Soundflower(16ch)

Picture_1.png

EDIT:

But check that all of your outputs has the same frequency, if they don't have it they wont add outputs

 

Now Open AU Lab (it is located in /Developer/Applications/Audio) and add as many outputs as you have (each one can handle 1 to 7 speakers) I chose stereo in this example, see:

Picture_2.png

Then add an input:

Picture_3.png

Now select your agregate device in the Audio Device drop menu:

Picture_4.png

Then time pass to the "Input Channels" tab and select the SoundFlower you attach to the Agregate Device:

Picture_5.png

Then a new window appears with this:

Picture_6.png

Select the little numbers on the left of the Audio 1 slider so they appear on the output sliders.

Now, double click on the "Output 1" title and select your agregate device in the drop down menu:

Picture_7.png Picture_8.png

Optionally you can add buses (2 for stereo of course), I did this before without the bus thing ant it worked, but there is something different in the sound, I will investigate this later.

Picture_9.png

Finally you end with this:

Picture_A.png

You can save this setup with any name.

 

But in order to make this work you need to select the soundflower device as your output:

Picture_b.png

Remember that Au Lab needs to be running in order to all this work togetther.

 

With this I can have 6 speaker of my ALC888 plus 8 of my Audigy and another 8 with my Sonica Theater :)

 

22 speakers = party time:

:)

Enjoy.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lot of detail there, thanks.

 

I'm curious if this would work for me. I have a 5.1 setup but no 5.1 (which isnt fixable at the present apparently.) so my sound comes out of just two of my speakers.I wouldn't mind getting the other 3 speakers to work though for listening to music, etc. Does this guide only work with digital output? My current setup is 3 co-ax analog ones but I can probably get a cheap spdif cable if the guide calls for it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes I created one for stereo on all speakers and another for 5.1 output, since I don't have 5.1 on iTunes music I use stereo but in all my speakers, and use 5.1 with 5.1 movies.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This sounds great but when I told people I succesfully managed to make an aggreagate device out of all my soundcards my Delta 44, Phonic firefly and my Saffire Pro 10I/0 getting a whole bunch of inputs and outputs avaliable for Logic studio Pro 8 some guy said well that´s great but it´s well known aggreagate device does´nt work so good so you will get phaseout problems. Does it work ok for you? I mean it´s hackmacs we´re talking about here and maby this phaseout problem are only happening in real macs?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I really don't know about the phase out problems. I gues using this for profesional work is not the best option.

 

As I said the first time I did it I didn't add the buses, and it worked, then when finally want to write the guide I found another guide that includes these buses and I gave a try, I hear some differences but don't know what is really happening.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

hmmm, Sound flower output starts distorting after few minutes for me, Is it happening with anyone with 10k2 chip??? I'm talking about listening to music continuously for 1 hour or more (ofcourse you will notice distortion a lot earlier).

 

closing and reopening AU Lab + .trak file solves it (more like reloading). Am i the only one with this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i can't get this to work. when I make my agg. dev. in audio midi setup, I select my SB0350 10k2 (0 in, 8 out) and the soundflower 2chan (2in 2 out). In the box above where the name is, the agg dev still shows 0 in 8 out. So i go to au lab, i add 3 stereo outputs and 1 stereo input. i select my agg dev "6chanout" as the audio device while "output channels" is selected. It looks fine, shows 6 of 8 channels being used. then i select input channels, it shows my 6chanout device still selected as the audio device, and "Audio input not supported". so if i choose the soundflower 2chan here, i see stereo input, but then the output channels only show stereo out. If i hit "done" with my 6chanout agg dev selected, I have no inputs in the next window. If i select the soundflower 2ch, then 2 of the 3 output channels are not used, and I get no sound output too.

 

what am i missing? how do i pick my 6chanout as the output, and soundflower 2ch as the input?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...