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Noobie question on choosing sample rate for RME ADI-2 DAC FS

MathBone

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Apr 3, 2021
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Which sample rate to choose in the RME MADIface settings? 44.1, 48, 96, 192, ...,768? I see that a wide range of frequencies are supported, all the way up to 768kHz. Most of the listening is done from a Windows Spotify desktop client on the highest quality setting (I'm unsure about the sampling rate but I believe the bitrate is 320kbps) and is connected through USB. I have no idea whether the app uses ASIO or WASAPI or Pulse or any of that stuff, but it's just the standard Spotify desktop client being used as a player.
Which frequency setting is recommended?
Thank you very much for any advice!
 

DVDdoug

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Usually Windows will use whatever it gets (if the hardware supports it). But you don't always know what Windows is doing... If you have a soundcard that only runs internally at 44.1kHz and you play a 192kHz file the drivers will automatically and "secretly" downsample. It's similar to printing a high-resolution image on a low-resolution printer. It "just works" and you don't get a warning that the image is being reduced in resolution.

From what I understand ASIO doesn't resample so if your hardware doesn't support the sample rate it won't work. But there might be exceptions. The same might be true for WASAPI exclusive mode. I would assume that Spotify doesn't support ASIO.
 

3125b

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Windows 10 supports up to 384kHz, although some applications only support up to 192kHz - Spotify for example won't work with anything higher and doesn't support ASIO (and I guess that would be entirely too much to ask, it doesn't even run all that stable after all).
I have a couple programs that run ASIO, those automatically set the native sampling rate of the content. And whatever is set here (or manually in the driver) becomes the only option in the Windws sound settings, so all other programs that use WDM are sampled to that rate as well.
But the reality is, that it doesn't matter anyway.
 
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MathBone

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Sounds like I'm best off using the 44.1kHz setting. From what I can tell, Spotify streams are most likely to be at 44.1kHz, at least until they release their higher quality tier later this year that may have a higher sampling rate. Thank you!
 
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