I’m on Mac OS Mojave. I’m experimenting with using FMOD to generate 7.1.4 ambiences for non-game applications. The problem I’m running into is that FMOD won’t let me simply send all of the outputs to a 7.1.4 device. This appears to be happening because FMOD always mixes down to the speaker configuration of the specified interface in Audio MIDI Setup. And unfortunately Audio Midi Setup doesn’t support speaker configurations beyond 7.1.
Is there a way to disable the AMS speaker configuration “awareness” of FMOD so that it will just play all of the channels out the assigned interface?
This leads me to another question–how do people monitor the 7.1.4 output of FMOD for game applications? It doesn’t appear to be possible on the Mac.
FMOD sends its output to your device via the operating system. As such, even if FMOD did ignore the operating system’s speaker configuration settings, it wouldn’t help; your OS would not handle the “extra” channels, and so would not pass them on to your device.
Generally speaking, Audio MIDI Setup should allow you to select any channel format that’s supported by the devices attached to your machine, so you should be able to select 7.1.4 channel format if your chosen device supports it. Perhaps there’s a driver that needs to be updated, or an additional device you need to install?
AMS doesn’t support a 7.1.4 speaker configuration. It doesn’t matter what hardware you connect. I’ve never heard of a pro audio application (as opposed to iTunes or whatever) that even considers the AMS speaker configuration. It’s really a consumer feature for playing back movies and such.
What I’d like to see is the ability to ignore the AMS speaker configuration and simply map the FMOD output to the channels of my choice. I’m sure you’ve seen this in DAWs such as Reaper or Pro Tools, where you can monitor immersive formats on any channels of an interface, regardless of the AMS speaker configuration.
In response to this support case, our API developers have decided to re-investigate how AMS and output devices interact on macOS, in the hopes of finding a way to do what you’re asking for.
In the mean time, though, I’m afraid there’s no easy workaround for this limitation.