[LAD] FULL audio-signal path

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