That's exactly the question - does it really "discard" 8bits?
Or does it something else with them?
what the driver itself does is anyone's guess...it will either discard the 8 bottom bits(16bit already has 96dB dynamics, how many do you need exactly?
) or it will convert to 16 or 24int(and each int>int conversion is very lossy by essence).
if there were a way to capture the drivers output(loopback S/PDIF?), we could check w/ a bit-meter(as in Wavelab or Ozone)...so that's 16/44.1 fed through Ozone4 in ffdshow(all processing disabled), you can see that the bottom 8 bits aren't lit:
and now if I play w/ ANY setting in Ozone4, they are indeed lit(as Ozone4 works in 64FP internally):
I've checked ffdshow's output bitdepth through Graphedit on many occasions, and that's how any audio app works...if there's no processing(in 32/64 int/fp), there just isn't ANYTHING to feed those 8 bottom bits.
if you convert 16 to 24 w/o any PP, you will get 8 padded bits...spanning 16 bit over 24 requires processing, it requires conversion and optional dithering/noise shaping. but anyway, each int/int conversion is always using dither, ppl talk about it like it's a new thing...but if we were to just trim bits, it'd sound HORRIBLE.
It's not possible to try it, because libsamplerate only works within [-1.0, 1.0] values. For trying it libsamplerate would have to be changed to work with other values, and that, obviously, is out of question. Also, It would be worthless, because the error should be minimal...
65533 roundoff errors?
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digi...capable-bit-perfect-output-4.html#post1466989
you're in contact w/ the libsamplerate author, maybe this link would make sense to him? this VST plugin coder seems to very much know his business.
if you are inputting 24bit padded to 32 to Reclock, let it do some 32fp processing and outputting 32int in the end again, then yes! I'm pretty damn sure that you're sending more than 24int to your audio drivers.
but 32int includes more data than 32fp, so maybe you're not really sending 32 full bits, I think you can only make 25int out of 32fp?
anyhow, if you guys could just add "32 bit" and "24bit padded to 32" in the Reclock bitdepth options, we would call it a day and anyone would be able to try both and pick whichever one he prefers 8)