Disclaimer: OK, so I'm a bit stupid about manipulation of the more esoteric sample rates of digital music files, so if I don't make any sense in what I'm asking, bear with me.
I've got hold of a 24/96 rip from a remastered vinyl release of Astral Weeks, consisting of 5 large .rar files (I haven't even unpacked these files yet). Having never fooled around with 24/96 files before, am I going to be able to listen to these without somehow converting or otherwise manipulating them to lower rez, thus defeating the purpose of the 24/96 sampling rate?
All this shit does nothing but confuse me, but here's how I play digital files on a dedicated system- computer> Music Hall dac25.2>Denon integrated amp>Maggie MMG1a speakers.
Now, I know just enough to realize that the key to the whole thing lies in the dac25.2- according to the manual, it uses a 24bit/ 192kHz digital-to-analog converter, but isn't really definitive as to whether it actually will output a 24bit signal ( in the technical specs, it does give dynamic range values for both 24 and 16bit sample rates, so maybe?). The dac has user-selectable upsampling capability- defaults to 16bit/44.1, capable of upsampling to either 24bit/96kHz or 24bit/192kHz.
Question- if I leave the 24bit/96kHz files as they are and play them through the dac, will the dac take them down to 16bit/44.1 (thus negating the sound quality improvement of the 24bit sampling), and then upsample them if I choose that capability, or will it keep the files in 24bit rez?
Question- regarding burning to disk, I've read that the 24bit files can be burned as DVD-A files, but I don't have playback capability for DVD-A. The best my blu ray player will do is SACD, and I have zero idea if it's even possible to get the original files into a state to burn them as an SACD.
This is a windy fucking explanation of my confusion, but if any of you digital mavens can educate me, I'll be forever in yr debt. Not to the point of putting you in my will or anything, but grateful in a non-lucrative sort of way.
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