[LAU] How do i play 24/96 and 24/192 bit files at native rates and verify that it's happening?

[Bearcat M. Sandor]

> Paul, I think either you misread him a bit or I did.
> 
> My quick and dirty read follows:
> 
> I think what is basically wants is for the system to determine the one files 
> is in format Y and set up HW to match. The another file is determined to be 
> format Z and sets up HW to match so that at all times, if possible, what is 
> being sent to the card matches what the card is configured for.
> 
> It seems he knows this will not be able to happen for 44.1 or below as his 
> card only goes down to 48.
> 
> Does this seem possibly what is being asked on a re-read?
> 
Thanks Drew and Paul,

Heh. Let me restate it by addressing what i want. I want 24/96 and
24/192 played at full quality:
1) I play a 16/44.1 file. It's upcoverted to 24/48khz which is the
card's lowest rate. I don't have any choice in this matter
unfortunately.
2) I play a 24/96 file. The data stays at 24/96 and is not converted to
24/48.
3) i play a 24/192 file. The data stays at 24/192 and is not converted
to 24/48.    
4) If the above is not possible, i'll upconvert everything to 24/192.

I'm using MPD for playback, pulseaudio for a sound server and alsa.  I
would like it if it were the case that they just passed it along the
chain and it were played in it's native format, and no special
configurations were needed to accomplish that. Is this the case? If not
what special considerations for configuration should be taken into
account.

If it's not the case that the files bit-rate is untouched by mpd, pulse
and alsa, each of those programs/libs have settings that can force
change the bitrates for all input to a single rate. If they can't just
pass it along i'd choose to change the rate to 24/192 for all files.
Would i only have to change settings in one of those or all three? If i
change MPD to upconvert to 24/192 will pulseaudio or alsa just reformat
it back to 24/48?

To put it another way, if i had a sacd player it would be sending data
at bitrates that correspond to what's on the disc, not downsampling
things to 24/48. I want to do that with my music files too using my pc.
I know that some sacd players like to upsample everything to 24/192. If
that's the only way to do it to play all files at no less than their
native bitrates then i'll do that. 

I have a quadcore at 25.ghz and 8 gigs of ddr3 ram so my system should
be able to handle the overhead.

I can explain it another way if need be.

Thanks,

Bearcat