[MPlayer-users] MPlayer Audio Quality

[Mark Williams (MWP)]

Greetings all,

Due to all the different audio media formats i play, and requiring the use of
JACK, i use mplayer for all my music playing duties.

Im wondering how pure the audio out of mplayer is though.

For example, if i use the FLAC decoder to play music, mplayer shows it goes
through a lot of format conversions and i assume, a couple of volume filters before it
reaches JACK.

I assume its going through a few volume filtes as using +,- keys changes volume
separtley to the command line volume option.

Can anyone explain the audio chain inside mplayer and how best to optimise it
for quality?

I also just made and tried playing a simple 48khz, 32bit WAV file.
I get this:

Playing test.wav.
Audio file detected.
==========================================================================
Forced audio codec: mad
Opening audio decoder: [pcm] Uncompressed PCM audio decoder
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, floatle, 3072.0 kbit/100.00% (ratio: 384000->384000)
Selected audio codec: [pcm] afm:pcm (Uncompressed PCM)
==========================================================================
Checking audio filter chain for 48000Hz/2ch/floatle -> 48000Hz/2ch/floatle...
AF_pre: 48000Hz/2ch/floatle
AO: [Jack] Initialising library.
AO: [Jack] Sample rate mismatch, trying to resample.
AO: [Jack] OK. I'm ready to go (44100 Hz/2 channels/16 bit)
AO: [jack] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bps)
Building audio filter chain for 48000Hz/2ch/floatle -> 44100Hz/2ch/s16le...

Why is the audio being output to JACK at s16le when JACK can handle 32bit audio?

Thanks for any help.
 Mark W.