[LAD] FULL audio-signal path

[Andrew Gaydenko]

Hi, All!

Say, we have such audio-chain:

1. analogue source (say, mic-amp),
2. sound card's line input (let sound card be rme hdsp9632),
3. JackRack (or some other JACKified LADSPA host) with the only LADSPA plugin,
   let last one be a simple aplifier,
4.1. sound card SPDIF output.
4.2. sound card analogue output,

OK, ALSA-driver, HdspMixer, JACK-server and something else are somewhere
inside this "user' POV" list.

The questions are:

- what is full strict list of "audio-entities" steps in such roughly-presented chain?
- which formats (float/integer, bitdepth) are used on each step?
- which format convertions between steps may be treated as lossless and whcih as "lossness"?

And more generally: are there common rules for keeping sound quality intact? I mean
only format-related probable issues rather hardware issues like jitter and such.


Andrew