Sign Up to our social questions and Answers Engine to ask questions, answer people’s questions, and connect with other people.
Login to our social questions & Answers Engine to ask questions answer people’s questions & connect with other people.
Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
I would like to play 32 bit audio from my computer. Is this possible? I know about “AL_EXT_FLOAT32” extension, but does any hardware/windows even support this? And if there is support for it, will it just be reconverted and played as 16 bit audio?
Is it possible to play 32 bit audio from a PC with consumer hardware?
As far as I’m aware, most consumer hardware only supports 16-bit audio output. Some of the premium sound devices sometimes support up to 24-bit. Most digital audio systems support 16 and 24-bit PCM steams. I have not seen consumer devices which support 32-bit PCM.
Most likely windows will just scale it down or, with some devices, will crash the sound driver (remember some Sound-Blasters on XP).
Many music formats can be stored in (normalized) 32-bit floats, and will quite possibly be processed by OpenAL or Operating system’s audio mixer in 32-bit floats. The mixer then sends the data to the driver, which is usually 16-bit.
I don’t know OpenAL, but I think that format is about the input audio format (or the internal mixer?), not the audio output it will produce?
That, or it supports high-end professional equipment?