Playing high res audio files on my Spin 5

Calog

Can I upgrade my Spin 5 to play high res music above 44.1kHz? Realtek high def audio SST card limits out at 48kHz. All drivers are up to date. Do I need to replace the card or is there an upgrade I'm missing?

IronFly

why do you need to play higher than 48kHz, the human hear can't hear that frequency; you can just downsample with nearly every audio player.

Calog

It's about how the analog to digital conversion is done, not the frequency we hear at. "Sampling frequency" (kHz) is the number of times samples of the signal are taken per second during the conversion process, so it's not related to the higher frequency part of the music. Also, the more bits there are the more the original signal can be sampled so you can hear a noticeable improvement in quality going from 16 bit to 24 bit. Hi-res audio files use a sampling frequency of 96kHz or 192kHz at 24bit, instead of 16bit/44.1kHz (the standard CDs were set at). Cheaper memory these days are making high res files available to the masses (one song can be 180Mb), assuming they are played back on the right equipment. So there's more music information to hear at all frequencies in high res files, meaning it's closer to the original recording in the studio.

IronFly

Buy an external USB DAC.