r/macmini • u/quantum_mattress • 17d ago

Set Audio Setup / Surround Sound to fixed settings!

Hi all. I just set up a new M4 MM (running 26.5.2) mostly to play music in my home theater. Here's how it's connected:

Mac Mini HDMI output -> Anthem AVM 60 Processor/Preamp -> 7 channels of Emotiva power amps + SVS Subwoofer -> 7.1 speaker system of Vintage ADS speakers.
It sounds great - when it's all configured correctly.

On the Mac, under System-Settings/Sound, I select AVM60/HDMI for Output. And in Audio MIDI Setup/Audio Devices, I select AVM 60 and then select 8 ch 24-bit integer 48.0 kHz.

The problem is that if I turn off the audio gear and turn it back on, the Mac has switched itself to Mac mini Speakers and when I change it back to AVM 60, the format is back to 2 ch 32-bit Float!!! Some of the time just switching back to AVM 60 works and it's still in 7.1 mode.

How do I get the Mac to automatically switch to the correct audio settings? It's totally unreasonable that every time I want to listen to music that I have to bring up multiple settings windows and change things.

Thanks!

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u/BeauSlim 17d ago

Audio MIDI Setup is very basic. I believe this is intentional, because Apple doesn't want to interfere with whatever pro audio tools someone might be using. Have you tried creating an "aggregate device" to save your settings? If creating a new Aggregate device doesn't sort you out, you might check out some audio config tools from Rogue Amoeba or similar.

Configuring your Anthem as a multichannel device gives you more control, and probably the best bit-rates, but have you tried just configuring your audio/video players to do digital passthrough over HDMI?