[Htpcdsp-discuss] Sample format details

[Scott L. <sl...@ha...>]

I did some checking around, mostly in supplemental SDKs from audio 
companies, and it looks like there are only two formats even considered 
for the sample buffers: 16-bit PCM and float.

Some of the docs suggest that people should only worry about float 
since about every audio app that hosts the plug-ins supports floats. 
(one SDK included a test utility that only required plug-ins to support 
floats.)  I also saw some sample plug-ins that handle an arbitrary 
number of channels.

So if components are being created for use at the end user filter graph 
level and provide somewhat general functionality, I would push for the 
use of floats to offer easy compatibility with other plug-ins, and 
possibly let people use the components in separate applications.

For a sub-component that is tightly tied to a larger function (like 
dependencies on values from the decoded stream), the sample format 
could just be what's most appropriate for that situation since it 
wouldn't be very useful on its own.

Scott