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[tyler69]

hi there,

i'm playing amazon music through amazon's app. i use the wdm driver for it. i just noticed that it plays back at the sample rate which is set under "standard format" in the JRiver Media Center sound device (tray). i was of the impression that when i check the two "exclusive" options MC would change the sample rate according to the input sample rate. audio path in mc shows whatever sample rate i set in the JRiver Media Center sound device with "no changes". am i missing something or is this just how it works?

thanks.

[tyler69]

bump

[tyler69]

bump

[Hendrik]

The WDM driver can't automatically change sample rate by itself. The playing application (ie. amazon) could do that if it were to use exclusive mode, but most apps don't support that - so WDM is always stuck to the rate you configure it to.

[tyler69]

thanks. that means, that i need to look into the playback application (what sample rate the audio stream has), compare it to the windows mixer (which would match the audio streams sample rate if the application would use "exclusive mode" and adjust the sample rate accordingly in the windows mixer if i want to have matching sample rates, correct?
would the wdm driver even work when the playing application would have exclusive mode?
would it be wise and/or do you know of a tool/plugin that forces exclusive mode? since the process of handing over the sample rate information is "application -> windows (mixer) -> wdm driver", forcing the windows mixer to adjust the sample rate would probably solve this.

[Hendrik]

The application supporting exclusive mode (or something more fancy like ASIO) is the only way to really do this. You can't "force" it, since it always goes through the Windows mixer first, you can't get in between there.

[tyler69]

sorry, "forcing" was probably a misleading term. however, thanks. i think that i understand the problem now. i guess it's just how windows works..

[blgentry]

Why do you even care with Amazon music?  It's lossy compressed so you've already lost in the sound quality department.  Unless the Windows mixer really butchers the sample rate conversion?  But I'd expect Amazon music to stay locked at 44.1kHz so...

Brian.

[tyler69]

amazon music was just an example since that's when i noticed the discrepancy. i own an exasound dac that plays with asio only, so i rely on mc's wdm driver in order to get any sound from windows that's not using asio.
i was not aware of the fact that the wdm driver plays back audio at the sample rate that is set in the windows mixer (or to be more precise: i thought the mixer is being circumvented when playing back audio through mc's wdm driver).
you're of course right that amazon music is not lossless, however playing back music (regardless if lossy or not) in its native sample rate might have benefits to using windows' resampler. microsoft would maybe agree: https://support.microsoft.com/de-de/help/2653312/audio-file-sounds-distorted-after-you-convert-the-sample-rate-in-windows-7-or-in-windows-server-2008-r2