So there will be a lot of processing at the amp, why not declare itself as the destination for the Mac. Anyway, the amp has to pick up the audio signal to be sent to loudspeakers and do a stereo mixdown of a multi-channel signal to be sent for the TV. If you'd ask me, Onkyo's solution is much better than Yamaha's. The only explanation for this is, that my Yamaha takes the TV's spec from the HDMI and proxies it to the Mac and his Onkyo doesn't take anything, it simply presents itself as the destination. Totally different from what my Mac displays. Whoa! His Mac Mini displays his A/V amp as the HDMI destination. Here is another screen capture of Audio MIDI setup from my brother's computer: The Audio MIDI setup clearly displays as Sony TV being the HDMI output device. The problem, like presented earlier is depicted here: The previous attempt can be found here. All the information I can find on this subject shows that for some people multi-channel audio works fine, nothing special is required, but then again for some of us this is a pain and its almost impossible to get this working. Is there a way to force a 5.1 signal out of the mac mini? Is there another configuration I'm not thinking about.This is my 2nd attempt of trying to clarify how to get Dolby Digital 5.1 output via HDMI. You may ask why not just use an apple TV, but I want use this computer as the plex server for the rest of the house. I'm close to giving up and returning this thing, but I really want to make it work. It may be important to note I have Sound Source installed because I want to control the volume from my keyboard and not separate remote. I've also tried using the thunderbolt (or is it usd-c) outpuit, plugging the hdmi cable into a usbc/hdmi dongle. In both cases, I've fiddled the samsung setting to Bitstream and PCM, it changed nothing.

Result: Stereo sound in the 5.1, Mac Mini still only reads two audio devices, Mac mini speakers and Samsung, with two channels. I plugged the mac mini into the converter via HDMI, then another HDMI from the converter to the TV, and from the converter to the surround sound via optical cable. Bought a HDMI converter (Auvipal HDMI to HDMI+Audio+ARC).

Result: Stereo sound in the 5.1, Mac Mini reads output as 2 channelsĢ.

Mac mini HDMI to TV 3rd port, with the TV's optical out to the Surround Sound in.

Mac mini speaker output