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Re: dtas-player warning
From: |
Eric Wong |
Subject: |
Re: dtas-player warning |
Date: |
Wed, 16 Oct 2013 09:59:03 +0000 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) |
Rene Maurer <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hello
>
> First of all: dtas is great!
Thanks!
> When playing flac file over USB, dtas-player displays the following
> warning:
>
> play WARN alsa: can't encode 32-bit Signed Integer PCM
Yes, I get this too. This is because dtas (and sox) operates at 32-bit
internally and most soundcards cannot play at 32-bit.
32-bit is good for applying effects, but it requires sox to convert
back to 24 or 16-bit for playback.
> I have done the following to enable my USB-DAC:
> dtas-ctl sink ed default env.AUDIODEV=hw:1,0 env.AUDIODRIVER=alsa
>
> When I do in a shell:
> export AUDIODRIVER=alsa
> export AUDIODEV=hw:1,0
> play x.flac
This was a 16-bit FLAC file, I suppose?
> .... no warning is displayed.
>
> I am using dtas 0.5.0.
>
> Any suggestions?
I suggest just ignoring the warning. You should not get any quality
loss if you run w/o effects (this includes software volume/ReplayGain).
If you do run effects, perhaps adding "dither -s" for 16-bit will improve
quality[1]. No dithering is needed for 24-bit DACs, AFAIK.
You can also try (not suggested, though):
dtas-ctl format type=s16
This is not suggested if you use any effects at all, especially
software volume/ReplayGain. You can see the effects chain more
clearly if you set SOX_OPTS=-V3 (or any higher number)
There's also some 32-bit USB DACs on the market nowadays, but I don't
think theres any real-world difference from 24-bit DACs.
[1] - I've personally not heard the difference between dither types,
but the sox documentation seeems to recommend "dither -s" for
16-bit, and sox touts it's dither implementation on the website.