[pulseaudio-discuss] Hardware support, resampling, bit-for-bit

[Jan Steffens]

On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 11:02 PM, CC <ccomren at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> I'm new to PulseAudio and couldn't find the following online:
> Can PulseAudio take advantage of advanced sound cards, e.g., mixing and
> resampling?
> Does it allow for bit-for-bit playback?
> I'm building an media pc, but might have wrong ideas about the requirements
> -- I do lite the highest possible audio quality. I assume resampling will
> slightly reduce audio quality (which I guess is why Windows allows
> bit-for-bit playback) and also burns a few CPU cycles.
> CC

No and no. PulseAudio does not support hardware mixing and will
resample all incoming streams to the default sample rate and format of
the sink (by default 44.1kHz 16bit).