So your hooked up your Mac to your 5.1 receiver and all you get is lousy stereo? Worry no more, decent AC-3 support is finally available for Mac OSX! In my case I have an Intel Mac Mini from 2006 hooked up to a Denon AVR-3801 via a fiber optic S/PDIF…...
WOW! All this time I've been running the wrong AC3 codec on my Mac Mini! Last week, I found one that works soooo much better! To find it, I actually had to search for "a52 codec" and not "ac3 codec". Go figure! Intel version (Universal) Original…...
Update: I originally found this codec. However, I've later found a much better one! 2009 Update: The a52 codec now supports 5.1 surround passthrough, even on Mac Mini.
Check it out here.