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[mramsden]

I downloaded (from HD Tracks) what what supposed to be a 96/24 album, but when I go to play it, J River tells me it is 88.2, and says my DAC doesn't support this, and resamples to 48/24, which plays fine (but is not what I paid for!)

My DAC (in the Marantz SA8004) is actually supposed to support this bitrate when supplied by SPDIF. 96/24 Does work.

I looked  into the optical out on my motherboard (gigabyte GA-H67MA-D2H-B3) which uses the Realtek ALC892 chip, which is supposed to support 88.2 as well as 96 and up to 192/24.  If I go to the HD Audio control panel, under "default formats" it includes 44.1, 48, 96, 192.  That is, leaves out 88.2 and 176.4, even though according to the gigabyte and the Realtek literature, those bitrates should be supported.

Is this something others have come across?

I have sent info requests to both Realtek and Gigabyte.

..Mike

[DarkPenguin]

In the meantime you might want to upsample to 192 particularly if you use the internal volume or dsp...

[mramsden]

J River asked if I wanted to play downsampled to 48/24, which sounds ok ... will it sound better upsampled to 192? Didn't try that ... I usually just output direct to the DAC with no up or downsampling. Is it worth using J River to upsample ripped CD files to 96/24 or higher?

As far as the software/hardware, it appears the Realtek drivers for the chip don't support 88.2 out spdif, even though the Realtek literature on the chip lists that as supported.

If I hear back from Realtek, I'll post here.

[Alex B]

In the meantime you might want to upsample to 192 particularly if you use the internal volume or dsp...

Actually upsampling is not anyhow useful when internal volume or DSP is used. In theory a higher bit depth can be useful, but bit depth is a different thing.

mramsden,

You could set MC to resample to 96 kHz when the sample rate is not 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz (select: "only sources less than 44,100 Hz or greater than 48,000 Hz"). This would resample 88.2 kHz to 96 kHz and preserve 96kHz as it is (the resampler does nothing when the sample rate does not change).

Upsampling in general is not useful, except when the hardware does not work correctly with a certain sample rate.

EDIT: a "not" was misssing.

[Vincent Kars]

As far as I know, Vista/Win7 don't support 88 & 176.
If you are using DS, this might be the cause.
Try WASAPI, maybe this will allow MC to send the data at its native sample rate to the DAC

[mojave]

I looked  into the optical out on my motherboard (gigabyte GA-H67MA-D2H-B3) which uses the Realtek ALC892 chip, which is supposed to support 88.2 as well as 96 and up to 192/24.  If I go to the HD Audio control panel, under "default formats" it includes 44.1, 48, 96, 192.  That is, leaves out 88.2 and 176.4, even though according to the gigabyte and the Realtek literature, those bitrates should be supported.

I have an Asus Essence ST soundcard. The hardware has always supported 88.2 and 176.4. However, the drivers would not support these sample rates. Asus later updated the drivers to allow the use of these sample rates if ASIO output is used. This is confusing to the consumer because the hardware spec is really only valid if the software/drivers support that output. Realtek may have a similar situation.

[mramsden]

As far as I know, Vista/Win7 don't support 88 & 176.
If you are using DS, this might be the cause.
Try WASAPI, maybe this will allow MC to send the data at its native sample rate to the DAC

Win7 does support it, if the attached hardware does ... which means the driver must be aware of the hardware.

Gigabyte got back to me with an example, but the example was using a Samsung display in the windows sound device control ... and that device includes 88.2, 96, 176.4 and 192 ... what they DIDN'T do was address the question I posed to them: why doesn't the Realtek driver they use support the spdif output their own chip supports!  The driver is telling windows it only supports 44.1, 48, 96, 192, which is what the DAC supports, but not what the spdif can pass thru.

Oh ... and by the way ... HD Tracks has kindly allowed me to download a replacement album, as they had mislabeled the initial album (now corrected.) Very nice of them.

As I hear back from gigabyte and Realtek, I'll keep you informed.

[Sandy B Ridge]

I have a similar issue.

88.2 works in WASAPI - Event Style, but not WASAPI!

MC15.174, Win 7 x64, output sound via HDMI via on board Intel graphics (H67 MoBo, intel 2500k) to Arcam AV Receiver.

SBR

[mramsden]

I got a new driver from gigabyte for this board ... it added 88.2 out spdif, but only 16 bit!

I've replied back asking why, since the realtek ALC892 chip on the motherboard is supposted to support up to 24 bit resolution and  44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 192 sample rates. Given that, it's not clear to me why they added only 88.2/16, when the "updated" driver includes 24 bit 44.1, 48, 96 and 192 ... why should 88.2 be limited to 16 bit?

[mramsden]

Peter, from XXHighend, in reply to some questions about this over in ComputerAudiophile, has noted that special drivers can access hardware rates, even when Windows drivers don't allow. I assume that's how USB drivers access higher than 96 for USB 2.0 under windows. I assume that 88.2 under Windows would also need a special driver ...

Question though is whether a media player can access spdif rates without a driver? Or does the media player, even when using ASIO or WASAPI still require the OS to inform it what rates are accessible?  Seems strange to me that when windows even without a driver can support 96/24, and that spdif typically goes much higher, that a driver can't somehow just dump the digital file out the spdif port.

(I know, it's probably not that simple, but I thought I'd ask!)

Is it possible that J River could potentially support rates that aren't directly supported in windows, or would that be too hardware dependent?

[Vincent Kars]

Question though is whether a media player can access spdif rates without a driver?

By design the answer is no.
You can’t talk to the hardware without a driver.
If this driver is UAA ( Universal Audio Architecture, a MS standard) compatible and supports 88 but in Win they  didn’t implement this sample rate properly, it won’t work.

If you use a protocol bypassing the Win audio engine like ASIO or WASAPI  I do think it is possible to use 88 as using this protocols one talks straight to the driver.

Of course all of the time it is hardware dependent. If your hardware don’t support anything > 96 it won’t regardless of the drivers.

USB is a different story as there are 2 specs
USB audio class 1 allowing for 24/96 max
USB audio class 2 allowing for 24/192 max.

USB audio class 1 is native on Win, OSX and Linux
As almost all USB DACs use native mode drivers and if Vista don’t support 88 on USB, none of them will work at this sample rate