In other words, it is bit-perfect on all known hardware. The precision offered by Media Center's 64bit audio engine is billions of times greater than the best hardware can utilize. In other words, the ASIO framework (which is very good) has the advice above about using the highest bitdepth available built in. This is because ASIO automatically delivers audio to the soundcard in the highest bitdepth that it supports. If you use ASIO, the output bitdepth selection is ignored. If you apply any digital processing, including volume, the sound quality will be worse.Transitioning between 16-bit and 24-bit source material will require reopening the audio hardware (so make gapless transitions impossible).This will at best sound the same as outputting 24bit. If you play 16bit input, you might feel inclined to output 16bit data even though your DAC is 24bit. It is recommended to output to your soundcard or DAC using the highest bitdepth that the hardware supports. The transition from 16bit to the output bitdepth (often 24bit) is bit-perfect. When outputting data to a soundcard or DAC, the 64bit data is converted back to the format required by hardware. It also puts the data into a format that is efficient for a computer to handle, and makes it so that tracks of varying bitdepths can seamlessly transition. This ensures that any processing like digital volume, Replay Gain, or any other DSP (if any is enabled) is done with as much precision as possible. When Media Center inputs data, all audio is first converted to 64bit. For example, the number "10" might become "10.0" or "10.00" if you add more bits, but all three representations are perfectly identical. Conceptually, imagine adding bits like adding zeroes at the end of a decimal. Each bit is worth 6dB, so:Ĭonverting from less bits to more bits is perfectly lossless. It's also possible to represent the bitdepth in decibels. This means each measurement of the sound wave will have one of 65536 (2^16) values.Ī good DAC is 24bit, meaning each measurement will have one of 16777216 (2^24) values. This is where the name bitdepth comes from.īitdepth describes the number of 0's or 1's (computers are binary) used for each height measurement of the sound wave.įor example, an audio CD is 16bit. One common unit in digital audio, and the unit used inside Media Center, is bits. There are several ways to describe the precision used for measuring the height of the sound wave.
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