Aura
1.2.0
Aura
1.2.0Virtual 5.1-channel surround sound.
Overview
Aura is a virtual 5.1-channel surround sound card. Without Aura, if you hook your Mac up to an A/V receiver with a fibre-optic cable, you'll only get stereo. With Aura, you get full 5.1-channel surround sound.
Features:
- Real-time 6.1 or 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo encoding for transmission over S/PDIF optical fibre.
- Selectable 48kHz or 44.1kHz sampling rate.
- Virtual surround if no fibre-optic connection is present (great for developers who want to test support for multichannel audio in their software without needing extra hardware).
- Status bar app displays activity status.
- Level meter shows audio levels on active channels.
- Preference pane allows you to choose a fibre-optic output and also (if required) specify the fallback channel for virtual surround.
- Automatic software update.
What's new in Aura
Version 1.2.0:
- Support for C-Media CM6206 external audio devices. This allows users with machines made in 2016 and later that don’t have built-in S/PDIF to use Aura.
- Should now use the integrated GPU on machines with both integrated and discrete graphics.
- Fixed: Level meter rendered too small on Retina machines.
- Fixed: Problems talking to the Aura driver (which may be accompanied with issues with audio working in general).
- Added support for matrixed 6.1 channel surround sound (ideally for use with a receiver compatible with Dolby Digital EX).
- Improved level meter performance.
- Added an option to hog the output device, which lets you avoid the delay while your receiver syncs, at the cost of not being able to stream AC-3 or DTS bitstreams from applications that support that (e.g. DVD Player or VLC).
- Added a Help button to the Preference Pane, and an Uninstall button to the About box.
- Fixed minor audio glitches when switching output formats.
- Fixed a bug that occurred if you started virtual mode in stereo; in that case, after switching to surround, no audio was generated.
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Aura Screenshots
$19.95
App requirements:
- Intel 64
- OS X 10.9.0 or later
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Developer Website:
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Most helpful
As for the "few seconds of fuzzy noise", you'll need to send us an email with the details of your set-up (what kind of receiver you have connected, which application you're using). It's also notable that there are *a lot* of really buggy audio applications on the Mac today that simply won't work with multichannel audio (whether we're talking Aura or one of the various hardware options). We're interested in reports of what works and what doesn't, so please do get in touch.