[DDDamian]

Question:
What would AE make of one of these devices.....
Musiland Monitor 01

They seem to deliver 24 bit/192kHz over optical/coax using clever ASIO and WASAPI drivers. People have had great success using with Foobar2k outputing hi def audio to DACs via this device. If Windows sees this device with supported modes up to 192kHz, will AE be able to operate at >48kHz?

My AVR doesn't have HDMI audio support. This is my only route to HD audio.

Thanks
Dave

I don't know anything about that device, but it's driver would have to decode DTS-MA/TrueHD for that to work, as well as to report those as supported modes to Windows. 24/192 is what you need for those formats, but you also need a decoder somewhere that would change the stream from these encoded formats to PCM. AE can decode TrueHD losslessly to PCM, so that's fine, but not DTS-MA. Your money might be better put to a receiver that supports those formats.

Thanks DDDamien,
Now i've got the nightly running ok and can see how the settings configured, can i rephrase my question?
With "Optical/Coax" selected in settings, assuming hardware supports the formats etc, will AE pass 96kHz 2-channel or is it locked to either 44.1 or 48kHz over Optical/Coax?
And if it will work at the higher rate, will it match the source file sample rate or reclock? I saw the discussion on advancedsettings.xml switch to disable 44.1>48kHz.

Given the limitations of my AVR (no HDMI audio) my best hope is to be able to play 2-ch 96khz Flac over spdif (which my AVR will accept!) or to pass to appropriate DAC.

Thanks and great work.
Dave

Hmmmm how best to answer....
Right now the logic behind "Analog/Optical/HDMI" is not used for much - since writing the device enumeration code which outputs at the start of your log, we are looking at better ways to use that information we worked so hard to gather.

Consumer devices using optical/spdif are supposed to run at 16bit/48khz, even though in many cases the hardware can accept much higher. That however is against the spdif standard. What you're talking about is a non-standard device, but that doesn't mean it won't work.

To protect user's hardware we will limit spdif/optical to 16/48khz, but we may include an as.xml setting to allow higher output rates, or we may just add a "USB" catagory which will allow higher rates. The whole selection of Analog/Optical/HDMI is more just a guideline - we care more about the actual device and it's capabilites than the type of connection.

Part of the work over the next month or two will include using the device capability information to automatically pick the best output format based on device and vice-versa, subject to user overrides. This will include interlocking incompatible devices and modes.

If your heart is really set on this device, and you're sure it will do what you want (I'm skeptical about DTS-MA) then one way or the other we'll accomodate it, so yeah, go ahead, just don't expect it to be a top priority as it's rather unstandard and uncommon. As mentioned before, I think you're better off investing in a newer receiver - even as a pre-amp for your exisiting AVR to decode these formats if your current AVR is good quality just w/o HDMI.

EDIT: had a quick look at that device - I really don't think it's going to do what you expect at all. We'll support the 24/192khz it say's it's capable of, but I think you're mistaken if you expect non-decoded TrueHD/DTS-MA from it. Those are only available via HDMI. We can decode TrueHD for you and that will work (maybe as it says it "upsamples" to 192khz) but that's it - no DTS-MA decoding. I don't see any magic shortcut to those - HDMI and a capable receiver are the only path to those.