Good day fellow HF'ers. After several years of searching, purchasing, trading and retiring various head-fi gear, I'm actually pretty happy with where I've landed in terms of equipment and headphones. Now that I've (mostly) calmed down and am starting to let the wallet stop smoking for a bit, I've got some some confusion about system setup on my Windows PC and thought I'd cast my inquiry into this forum as my Google-fu has apparently failed me, and I guess maybe I'm not using quite the right search terms here on HF because none of the posts I've read seem to address my specific question (or maybe they do and I simply don't recognize the right answer).
I have a large collection of lossless CD RIPs (mostly in ALAC, though a few in FLAC) as well as several dozen high-def albums from HDtracks. I'm not a big music streamer at all though I did spring for Amazon music HD which I'm liking very much. All told, I have access to local and streaming formats that vary from 16-32 bits w/sample rates at 44-192. When I use my external DAC for USB audio, do I need to reconfigure the Windows default playback sample rate and bit depth to match the source file formats every time that format changes, or just set it to the maximum that that the DAC theoretically CAN handle? Do I make those in the XMOS control panel as well (from SMSL's XMOS driver)?
This is where I'm getting lost--I assume simply from a lack of knowledge or understanding about what's really going on under the hood. Specifically, if I do turn up the bit-depth and sample rate to a maximum value of some kind, what happens then to tracks I spin up that are BELOW that maximum; do they all get uniformly up-sampled to whatever the Windows default format is (or the SMSL's XMOS setting configured using the tray tool)? I ask because I've noticed that when playing back some of my 16-bit lossless CD tracks, the LCD displays on my SMSL DACs will show they're receiving a 24-bit signal because that's the bit-depth I left the DAC in the last time I used them for some HD files. Have I missed a step/interface setting/control somewhere so that the USB output to my DACs will always match the input format natively and all file decoding is done exclusively at the DAC--or again, have I not understood exactly what is happening on those USB connections?
Thanks for the time and assist...I've been so hungry to get my gear in order, I guess I missed spending the same kind of time focusing on how to get my computer properly set up!
Cheers!
I have a large collection of lossless CD RIPs (mostly in ALAC, though a few in FLAC) as well as several dozen high-def albums from HDtracks. I'm not a big music streamer at all though I did spring for Amazon music HD which I'm liking very much. All told, I have access to local and streaming formats that vary from 16-32 bits w/sample rates at 44-192. When I use my external DAC for USB audio, do I need to reconfigure the Windows default playback sample rate and bit depth to match the source file formats every time that format changes, or just set it to the maximum that that the DAC theoretically CAN handle? Do I make those in the XMOS control panel as well (from SMSL's XMOS driver)?
This is where I'm getting lost--I assume simply from a lack of knowledge or understanding about what's really going on under the hood. Specifically, if I do turn up the bit-depth and sample rate to a maximum value of some kind, what happens then to tracks I spin up that are BELOW that maximum; do they all get uniformly up-sampled to whatever the Windows default format is (or the SMSL's XMOS setting configured using the tray tool)? I ask because I've noticed that when playing back some of my 16-bit lossless CD tracks, the LCD displays on my SMSL DACs will show they're receiving a 24-bit signal because that's the bit-depth I left the DAC in the last time I used them for some HD files. Have I missed a step/interface setting/control somewhere so that the USB output to my DACs will always match the input format natively and all file decoding is done exclusively at the DAC--or again, have I not understood exactly what is happening on those USB connections?
Thanks for the time and assist...I've been so hungry to get my gear in order, I guess I missed spending the same kind of time focusing on how to get my computer properly set up!
Cheers!
