[alsa-devel] Compressed Audio Playback/Capture through ALSA framework

[Clemens Ladisch]

Patrick Lai wrote:
> Why is AC3 passthrough acceptable

Because it pretends to be a normal 16-bit stereo stream at 48 kHz,
the only difference is that the IEC958 non-audio bit is set.

> but not other compressed audio format?

Other formats like DTS or WMA can be transported in the same way.

> Eliot Blennerhassett wrote:
> > ALSA might be extended to cope with compressed audio with fixed frame
> > size and bitrate, but dealing with any VBR encoding is likely to be even
> > more problematic.


Regards,
Clemens