will this properly play 32bit 48K .wav files?

2012-09-23 23:17:35

Will Foobar play audiophile formats in high resolution 32bit floating 48K sample rates?

Please confirm (Rare Wares) & foobar audio player can play back 32bit 48K .wav & 24bit 48K .wav files natively.
(iTunes will play a 32bit .wav file but 'ignorantly truncates' the extra bits - not good) 

I have a website where I sell high resolution audio files or audiophile files ;-) link removed

I am an audiophile recording engineer & my recordings are recorded at 24 bit 48K & mix/mastered to:
32bit floating 48K .wav master files. 

I want to ensure that my clients will have the opportunity to play back my  audiophile files as good as they reasonable can.
For Mac I found the Audirvana software works great, it displays the audio file format & the DAC settings.
I'm not too interested in any other features other than playing audiophile 32bit .wav files.

Thanks!
Roger Curley

will this properly play 32bit 48K .wav files?

Reply #1 – 2012-09-24 07:51:17

First, the sample rate of 48kHz is absolutely no problem to reproduce. Users might want to make sure to set their Windows audio output device to 48kHz too to avoid resampling by the OS, though this is arguably inaudible.

Regarding bit depth, foobar2000 DirectSound output uses 32bit floating point precision, which is the same as single-precision floating point. Thus you have a precision of 24bits, but due to the way floating point works, the actual representable dynamic range can be much higher. Other output methods like WASAPI or ASIO may or may not work with high bit depths, depending on hardware and drivers. Very likely all those output methods will be able to at least achieve 24bits of precision on modern hardware. Though if properly dithered to 16bit, the audio output will be indistinguishable from the 24bit or 32bit source anyway, and foobar2000 can do that.