Mini-displayport to HDMI and a separate audio out

Pandamonium

Golden Member
Aug 19, 2001
1,628
0
76
I'm going to pick up a MBP this coming (LA tax-free) weekend. My LCD has VGA and HDMI inputs, and built in speakers. The built in speakers are pretty awful, so I feed them audio over a standard 3.5mm cable. I think I can also pass the audio through my LCD, but my gut tells me that screws with the audio quality. I'm trying to figure out which adapter I need to buy.

Since a new MBP should support audio over mini displayport, I can use a mini-displayport to HDMI adapter and get audio over HDMI. If I do that and then plug a 3.5mm audio cable to the MBP anyway, will audio go over both HDMI and the audio cable? Or will one wire supercede the other? If one wire supercedes the other, which one wins?

If HDMI supercedes 3.5mm, then I need to get a mini-DP to DVI and a DVI to HDMI cable to connect it to my LCD.

If audio goes over both simultaneously or if 3.5mm supercedes HDMI, then I can get a mini-DP to HDMI and use my existing HDMI cable.
 

secretanchitman

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2001
9,352
23
91
all the current mbps will do audio and video through the mini displayport! you just need an adapter that will definitely pass through audio and video through hdmi (the minidp to hdmi adapter i got from monoprice ONLY does video, even though my mbp supports both).

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10428&cs_id=1042802&p_id=6331&seq=1&format=2 - thats what will definitely do audio and video. the optical cable goes from the mbp to the adapter (you can see in the screenshots) in order to make sure you are getting optical audio.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10428&cs_id=1042802&p_id=5969&seq=1&format=2 - this is the same as the above, but it only has hdmi, and no port for an optical cable. you would just run the lcd audio cable straight into the mbp itself.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10428&cs_id=1042802 - those are the converters going from minidp to hdmi/dvi/vga, whatever you need.

i believe if you get the first product i linked you, you can just use 1 hdmi cable for both audio and video. :)

you can also just get a regular minidp to hdmi adapter, run hdmi out from that into your lcd, then connect the speakers straight into the mbp. your choice.

hope that helped! :)