Re: [Alsa-user] Output sample rate

[Demian M. <dem...@ya...>]

Computer audio and sample rate issues are popping up everywhere, driven by
the desire for high quality audio on PC's finally. On Windows and Mac's its
even harder to get it right.

In Alsa (and PC audio architecture in general) the system has a default
sample rate, usually set by the driver it seems, and usually 48 KHz.
Normally all the audio is resampled to this rate to permit mixing audio from
different sources (the system alert noises with your MP3 playback for
instance). However for those of us trying to get very high quality audio out
of the PC it's possible to get the driver, the audio player and the card to
cooperate and play the stream at its original "bit perfect' sample rate. It
requires alignment of the audio player app (Xine in my case), Alsa, the
driver for the card (the latest version of the Juli@ driver) and it all
seems to work right after many hours of "tweaking".

 

I have NOT played with USB audio. For 44.1 and 48 it should be pretty
straightforward, the higher sample rates will require chip/card specific
drivers something never easy on Linux.

 

On a Mac you pretty much go deep into the system and set the sample rate for
the whole system and change it for every change in source rate. On a PC you
don't want Vista (yet. . . ) and you need to use ASIO and a lot of fiddling.
Which is why I'm using Linux.

 

Demian Martin

Product Design Services