Splitting iMac audio output - Optical/Stereo

If I understand you correctly, you want to take a digital signal out of the iMac and split it out to a digital signal going to your AV receiver and an analog signal going to a set of speakers. I think you'd need a really special box to do that and, if anybody has it, it would probably be monoprice.com.

If you were going analog all the way or digital all the way, it would be much easier because you'd simply need an adapter to split a toslink signal into two toslink signals. There are also splitters that take a single 3.5-inch plug and split it into two 3.5-inch female plugs so you can

Dennis

I think this can be done via the airport express:

http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/.../airtunes.html

Use the onboard connections to satisfy digital output and add the airport express to stream analog audio. Not sure if this exactly what your are talking about but is probably how I'll satisfy my receiver's lack of D/A conversion for whole house audio distribution.

I use an older version of this device to do exactly what you are asking:


Plug it into the a USB port and you get both optical and analog out simultaneously - no drivers needed. $74 on Amazon. You would need to get a cable to change the RCA analog out to 3.5mm, but these are cheap and common.

I actually use the UA-3 , which I've had for well over 10 years. I see a couple of these on eBay. This version has the added advantage of a separate analog headphone jack and full-sized TOSLINK optical in/out (the 1EX uses the same combined miniTOSLINK/headphone jack that Mac's have) as well as a guitar/mic input.

Good luck,
FB

I agree with Freddy B. that an adaptater like the Roland or the similar M-Audio Transit is your best bet.

This is because even if you could find or build a pure "splitter" TOSlink + stereo jack, I am not sure you could not get both outputs active simultaneously since you have to select either "system audio" (=stereo jack + TOSlink ?) and "digital audio" (=TOSlink only ?) from your Mac applications. And also beware that Airport Express will transport audio with an important time lag which makes movies unwatchable.

This is what I do - use the AE to run stereo off of my a crappy amp, and then to use the mini-Toslink to Toslink for 5.1 out of my HT Receiver (Denon 1909).

I control it all using an iPod touch with Apple's Remote software (for iTunes), and Remote Buddy (for FrontRow/Plex).

Using Airfoil extension, you can redirect all audio outputs to Airport express.
But as mentioned previously, the time lag makes it inappropriate for movies sound (although Rogue Amoeba offers a proprietary video player to solve this issue for DVDs).