Omni setup as audio interface for other apps.

[hitp]

Hello,

Wondering if anyone in the community can help. I have an Omni HD Native system for ProTools running on an older cheese grater Mac Pro. Works very well for PT.

Recently we need to run FCPX and Premiere Pro to Edit Videos. My work around is to just use the mini HP output from the Mac Pro and run to my monitor controller. Audio is not great so looking for a better way.

Is there a way to route the Optical SPDIF out of the Mac into the SPDIF input of the Omni using its D/A converters? Will we be able to use it without ProTools running with the Omni as a stand alone D/A converter for computer audio? So everytime I run computer audio I get playback through the Omni?

Disclosure: We basically just use our Omni like an HD 8x8x8 and have yet to try the i/o or monitoring features. Is it possible to use the ALT button and assign my computer's audio via SPDIF to that in the Set Up page? So any time we need to monitor computer output, we just select ALT.

Originally I planned to just get a Focusrite Solo and assign that to my video editing apps. But then running through the Omni seems to be a more elegant solution.

Thanks in advance! Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

[LDS]

Open Audio Midi Setup in OSX, right click on HD Native and choose "configure device". From memory there is a monitor, input, output and mixer tab. Click the input tab. For input 7&8 choose "Optical" and make sure the optical SPDIF button is checked below. Then in the mixerr tab, scroll across to input 7 & 8, pan them hard left and right, and press the "Mon" button for each of those two channels.

Connect an adat optical cable from the optical output of your Mac Pro, to the optical input of your omni. Select the Mac digital audio output in FCP... and you should be right to go. The alt button only alters your output configuration to your monitors (i.e, 5.1 surround to a stereo down mix, or a 5.1 speaker system to a second set of stereo speakers). It can't change what inputs you are monitoring, but with the way I described it shouldn't matter. It will let you monitor the optical audio output of your Mac Pro regardless of whether Pro Tools is open or closed.

[hitp]

Thanks so much LDS!!!

[LDS]

No sweat. I was a bit off with my memory, but here are a couple of screenshots of the appropriate settings for the Omni. You will still need to set up the 'monitor' tab to reflect your monitoring setup. If you are running a surround setup, you can use the 'alt' setup to fold it down to mono. Or if you are only running stereo, you can use it to fold it down to mono by clicking the "engage fold-down for ALT".