I just got a new box of cables from Monoprice.com. What a great company!

I picked up two regular optical cables, an optical cable splitter, a mini-Toslink to Toslink cable, and a Toslink to optical convertor.

First up, the two regular cables and the splitter. I'm running a previous regular toslink cable into the split and then dividing that out to my Onkyo receiver and to my G5. What I want to be able to do is record music from some concerts I've recorded on my Dish 211 receiver into something like Garageband or Soundtrack Pro so I can convert them for listening in iTunes.

The audio from the Dish receiver is feeding into my Onkyo receiver and playing back fine. I have digital optical in set up in the Sound preference pane on the G5 and it looks like there's audio coming in because the meter is bouncing (and there's a red light at the end of the cable), but I'm not sure what I need to do to capture the audio in the software I have. Other than having the system preference set to optical digital in port, what else would I need to do to capture audio this way. I didn't see anything helpful in the Audio Midi Setup application. I have both Garageband '08/'09 and Soundtrack Pro. How I would to set this up to capture the raw streams?

Next up, the optical out on the Power Mac G5. I suspect this might be fixed with a reboot, but setting the output to the optical digital out port does not send all audio to the Onkyo receiver as it did before. In EyeTV and I would assume in DVD Player, I can set those applications to use the digital out and it works, but obviously, I'd prefer everything use that output instead of having my alert sounds go through the built-in speaker.

Finally, I had been using the cable above with my Macbook Pro with a mini-Toslink to Toslink adapter, but with only two optical inputs and one coaxial input ont he Onkyo, I needed an adapter to make use of that coaxial audio cable. I decided to go and get a mini-toslink to toslink cable to replace the one with the adapter. Again, there's a red light coming out of the optical cable so that part is working, but I can't tell if the adapter (which has a power supply) or the coax cable is working.

I've never used a coax cable for audio, but choosing coax is not an option on the Onkyo receiver via the Audio Selector button, only Opt1 and Opt2. The manual seems to indicate I can use all three so I'm just not sure what's going on. If the adapter were not providing power, would that mean my Onkyo receiver wouldn't see it and thus it wouldn't be an option? Can you think of an easy way I can troubleshoot the convertor device to find where the problem is?

Thanks in advance...

Dennis

Oops! I forgot about those kernel panics with EyeTV and optical digital audio. And a reboot didn't solve the problem with system sounds coming out of the optical output.

Dennis

I've never used a coax cable for audio, but choosing coax is not an option on the Onkyo receiver via the Audio Selector button, only Opt1 and Opt2.

That problem is solved. In addition to the Audio Selector button on the receiver, there's also a Digital Input that gave me the option to select the coax input, which is working great. So, after rebooting the Macbook Pro, with the receiver properly configured, the optical digital output using the mini-Toslink to Toslink cable just worked.

Dennis

Try this for grabbing the audio tracks. I think this is what you want.

http://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/

That's nearly perfect. I can capture PCM audio with great results, but the dvr recordings that are Dolby Digital end up as a bunch of noise. Any idea what I could use to convert the Hijacked AIFF file (presumably AC3) to just regular audio?

Dennis

That's nearly perfect. I can capture PCM audio with great results, but the dvr recordings that are Dolby Digital end up as a bunch of noise. Any idea what I could use to convert the Hijacked AIFF file (presumably AC3) to just regular audio?

Dennis

No, I really can't help you there.:(

Next up, the optical out on the Power Mac G5. I suspect this might be fixed with a reboot, but setting the output to the optical digital out port does not send all audio to the Onkyo receiver as it did before.

That all seems to be working correctly now after another reboot. Even using Audio Hijack with PCM audio is passing through the G5. So, if I can just figure out how to capture raw AC3 streams and then convert them into something I can use with iTunes, I'll be all set. :)

Update: After another reboot, it stopped working. Very puzzling...

Dennis

That all seems to be working correctly now after another reboot. Even using Audio Hijack with PCM audio is passing through the G5. So, if I can just figure out how to capture raw AC3 streams and then convert them into something I can use with iTunes, I'll be all set. :)


I am 99% sure that you will not be able to capture the raw AC3 streams into the optical input of your Mac, for the following reason:

PCM stereo audio is one kind of format, on a hardware level, and the optical input of the Mac is designed to accept it. But, AC-3 dolby digital on an optical (or coax) cable is a whole other kind of hardware format. Optical and coaxial inputs of AV recievers ARE designed to accept it, but the optical inputs of the Mac are not.

So I don't think it's a matter of finding software that can deal with the AC-3 stream, because the mac's hardware digital input can't "process" it to get it into the computer in the first place. That's why you hear digital hash, the input is expecting a s/pdif stereo signal, it's getting an AC-3 signal, and the hash is its way of saying "I don't know what to do with this"

Having said that, here's 3 possible workarounds for your situation:

1-See if the menus of your Dish 211 have an option to configure the sound output as "stereo" instead of "surround" or "PCM" instead of "dolby digital". I know a lot of cable boxes have that setting, and setting it to PCM would have the dish box downmix the surround signal to stereo, and then output the digital signal as stereo PCM in the first place, which your Mac could deal with

2-Send the AC-3 signal to your reciever, set your receiver to stereo instead of surround, and then if your receiver has a digital output, try patching that into the mac's optical in, and see if that works. Your receiver would be downmixing the surround signal to stereo and then outputting the digital downmix as stereo to the mac

3-Buy a cheap dual RCA to 1/8" analog cable and go from the RCA outs on the back of the cable box to the 1/8" analog in of the Mac. This is not the best solution since you go through extra stages of D/A and A/d conversion, but if it's that or nothing.......

Thanks!

I don't know if this will be helpful or not but...

On DVDs that I have ripped with MactheRipper I have taken the resulting .VOB files and exported clips through MPEG Streamclip, exporting the AC3 audio. Then I create a new DVD of the clips using DVD Studio Pro. The result is a custom DVD that has the video I want along with the AC3 audio.

3-Buy a cheap dual RCA to 1/8" analog cable and go from the RCA outs on the back of the cable box to the 1/8" analog in of the Mac. This is not the best solution since you go through extra stages of D/A and A/d conversion, but if it's that or nothing.......

For a variety of reasons, the other options were not doable, namely because my receiver doesn't have a digital output. However, I already had the analog RCA cable to do this and my newer Dish receiver outputs Analog and Digital at the same time. I switched the cable from CD in (what I was using before the additional optical cables came in) to Tape Out, and analog out to analog in in the G5, and it's working fine.

For whatever reason, I couldn't get Audio Hijack to work with that input, but I'm trying out Wiretap and that seems to work with either input, allowing me to choose whichever one I need. Obviously, I'm not getting Dolby Digital, buy that's not that big a deal for me and this is a simple work-around with the added benefit of being able to dub from my Macbook Pro to an audio file on the G5, say during an iChat or Skype audio conversation.

Any thoughts on the relative merits of Audio Hijack Pro vs. Wiretap Studio, other than Wiretap Studio is more than twice as much?

Now, If it can just figure what's hijacking the digital output on the G5. Using that as the System input in the Sound Preference Page, my receiver shows it as Dolby Digital, which obviously isn't the case. Both DVD Player and EyeTV can use that output for outgoing audio streams, but I can't use it for all audio, say iTunes or even System alerts.

Looking at Audio Midi Setup on my Macbook Pro, which has a similar setup, it says output is not supported; on the G5 have several options including line out and digital out and that seems to be the only difference between the two. My guess is that this is where the problem is, but I just can't figure it out. It was working at one point yesterday, but rebooting the Mac caused it to stop working.

I'm going to try another reboot and zap the PRAM, which is always the answer for any Mac software problem... :)

Dennis

Now, If it can just figure what's hijacking the digital output on the G5. Using that as the System input in the Sound Preference Page, my receiver shows it as Dolby Digital, which obviously isn't the case. Both DVD Player and EyeTV can use that output for outgoing audio streams, but I can't use it for all audio, say iTunes or even System alerts.

This is weird. If my Dish 211K satellite receiver is receiving a PCM broadcast instead of a Dolby Digital broadcast, then the system and all other sounds work through the optical digital output; it doesn't matter if I have the system sound input set to line in or optical digital in. But if I have the receiver on the channel that's broadcasting a Dolby Digital signal, the system sounds are silent. It's almost like there's light bleeding between the input and output or the audio from the satellite receiver is being passed through the Mac. I don't see any way to disable that.

So, unfortunately, the solution does turn out to be setting my satellite receiver to only output PCM audio when I want to use optical audio out on the G5, which is a serious drag. I'll have to decide if it's worth it to use the optical inputs or to just unplug that splitter. I might even have to abandon the idea of recording using the optical input from the satellite receiver's optical output completely unless I can figure out the setting that's causing this problem.

Dennis