First - the usual warning applies - there is no point having an 24bit/96KHz audio card if all your audio source is ripped from CDs. There is no improvement in quality.
This is my understanding of Windows architecture - it has changed somewhat between XP and Vista but a lot is still valid. This is the normal audio subsystesm. I think games and specialist applications can bypass this subsystem using DirectX and get closer to audio hardware but in doing so probably lose the "Stereo Mix"/"What U Hear" facility. There are basically 3 parts in the audio path between an application and the physical connection from PC to AMP/speaker. 1. Sources 2. Mixers 3. Outputs Sources are typically applications (e.g WMP, "Stereo Mix"), hardware (e.g. mic, CD, DVD, Line-in, TV Tuners) or some other specialist such as MIDI. These source be configured to generate an audio stream of a particular quality. In most PCs they default to CD quality. Depending on the driver and hardware of the interfaces you may be able to set the input sources to higher quality (e.g. microphone to 24bit/96kHz). The "Stereo Mix" behaves similarly and if supported by the driver its audio may be set to a higher quality - the "Stereo mix" is a mix of other hardware inputs so they should also be the same quality. The mixer is a Windows function which is a nexus for all sources. The functionality of the mixer can be supplemented by a driver to provide "Enhancements" to the stream to be sent to the output (e.g. Bass boost, different room - concert hall, jazz club). The mix can also alter the master volume and relative volume of the sources which can be combined. The mixer feeds its stream to an output. The outputs are the hardware device which can be render into audio typically speakers but can be 2,2.1,5.1,7.1 etc. Also now digital outputs such as HDMI and SPDIF. The hardware output can also have settings if there is a choice for the users. Sometimes the attached hardware will affect the choice of formats available to the mixer. To play audio Windows has to ensure the source formats are matched to output formats and if choices are not available to enable the formats to be matched without conversion, then some conversion such as upsampling/downsampling may be applied by Windows. For example, if there is an audio card which only support 16/44.1 and a microphone which supports 16/44.1, 16/48 and 24/96 - then microphone will be set to 16/44.1. Alternatively if microphone only supported 16/44.1 and audio card supported 16/44.1 and 24/96 - the formats will be matched at 16./44.1. If the audio card only support 24/96 - I believe windows will upsample the microphone if possible (may require drivers, filters and/or codecs). In the SC context - wavin2cmd by default will do 16/44.1 but it can be set to 32/96 - however windows may refuse to create a connections to "Stereo Mix" if the requested format cannot be supported. Note it is the "Stereo Mix" driver that has to support 32/96 not the audio output hardware driver although the two are usually provided by the same vendor. So if you feel you need higher quality - you can update the conf file so that wavin2cmd generate a 24/96 PCM (assuming your "Stereo Mix" driver supports it) but then you must make sure in the conf file that SC is also expecting that format. -- bpa ------------------------------------------------------------------------ bpa's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1806 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35718 _______________________________________________ plugins mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/plugins
