MBP Soundcard

Will the sound card in the MBP support external speakers decently? I have Logitech Z2300s that I really like and would like to use these with a MBP when it's at my desk. TIA.

 

Plug it into the headphone jack, it'll work fine.

You have to spend a fair bit on a set of speakers before the onboard sound on a laptop becomes the limiting factor for audio fidelity.

 

Dan's right, in to the headphone jack and your set. Its even a optical-out, so if you have a surround sound system all you need is a TOSLINK to Optical Mini-Jack cable for full 5.1

 

Awesome to hear, thanks!

 

how are the speakers on MBPs?

 

Average for most notebooks, but quite good when you consider how thin the chassis is.

 

lol never had a laptop before, MBP will be my first


Someone open up a song and put the volume all the way up? and record it?.... or not

oh well your supposed to have headphones with notebooks anyway... If I plug in like a 5.1 channel surround sound headphone it will be 5.1 right? just by plugging it into the headphone jack?

 

no..you need to plug it into the toslink port on it i think..or whatever the 5.1 port is called. like the optical port

 

Hmmm ok, thanks.

 

The optical port is minijack, so its technically he headphone jack.

 

The only way you can get 5.1 sound out of the mbp is via the optical port (which is the same as the headphone port - how it behaves just depends on what you plug into it.)

The output from the optical port a digital signal. In order to convert it into an analogue signal that can actually drive something like the speakers in your headphones you still need an analogue - digital converter. I don't know of any surround headphones that will do this for you (ie, accept a optical signal and convert it into an analogue signal). You can get a 3rd party receiver that will do this for you, but they are usually kind of bulky, require external power, and don't generally offer the correct jacks for a standard consumer set of surround headphones (this can be addressed with suitable adaptor cables).

The other option is to look around for either a cheap usb soundcard that is meant to drive a surround system or a set of surround heaphones with a built in soundcard that just plugs into your usb port.

 

i have logitech z5500s and connect it through the TOSLINK cable. the sound is decent, but using my creativeaudigy 2 zs pcmcia card through mytoshiba laptop yields better sound. the toslink cable is good though, if you get a 5.1 system with optical in.

 

Does anyone know of a product that could take the optical, 5.1 output of my MBP and convert it to a 3-pin type output? I don't know if you know what I mean, but it's the general output that computer speakers use for 5.1 and 7.1. My speakers only support this input, and I'd like to use them for my MBP.

 

not sure about that ^^^ but I would think their would be a way.

unless their is not type of adapter, you would probably have to get some kind of external sound card.

glad to hear you guys got your 5.1 setups up and running with TOSLINK

 

toshibadude - are you going optical out of the creative audigy? if so, it shouldn't make any difference in terms of sound as the D-A converters in the z5500s are the limiting factor in sound quality, unless the apple output has really really poor clock jitter control.

thefil - any home surround reciever with an optical input can do what you ask. depending on the reciever quality, you may need to get some adaptor jacks that go from mono male 1/4" to stearo female 1/8" to get yourself down to the 3 mini-jack output you need. these adaptors can be found at most electronics stores for dirt cheap, or failing that try a good music store.

 

no, i have the toslink cable pllugged into the head phone jack on my MBP and the other end plugged into the optical port on the z5500s.

 

i was asking about how you connected the creative audigy to the z5500s - digitally or analogue, not how the mbp is connected.