Digital audio--TOSlink to Coax/RCA?
 

Well, this one is kind of a stretch, but I figure it's worth a shot anyway.

I have an Altec Lansing 5-piece speaker system that has an input for digital coaxial audio. I also have a Power Mac G5 with a digital-out port. Problem is that the Mac's output is an optical TOSlink port and not the RCA plug that the speaker system accepts.

Logic dictates that going from fibre to copper wire is, well, impossible. In case I'm wrong, though, does anyone know if there's some kind of adapter/converter I can use to get 5.1 channel (or 4.1 or whatever a 5-piece system does) from my Mac? Would be nice when I'm working with Reason or playing Doom 3.

Thanks a tonne.

A quick Google search for "TOSlink to digital coax converter" turns up a number of products. I'd assume any can work.

Yeah there are plenty of optical to coax boxes out there and you can get your hands on a decent one for about $30-40. Just be sure to use the shortest possible optical cable you can get your hands on. Even though these things say they work with up to 5 meter optical cables, I've had problems if I attempted to use a cable over 1.5 meters. This entirely depends on the quality of your TOSlink port, but the ones found in PCs(or Macs) tend to be on the lower end of quality. Better not to chance it and just run a longer coax if you really need to make up on cable length.

Just to warn you, the quality isn't ideal, but I doubt you will notice a drop in quality unless you are outputting to some very high end equipment, which you don't seem to be.

If "very high end" equipment is a ~$100 speaker system, then I suppose I am.

Somehow, though, I get the impression I'm missing a few zeroes on that figure. Thanks a ton, I'll look into the converter boxes.