Sorry for the quick reply above, but I had to take the son to Rugby (FYI they won in the dying seconds).
1) CD Audio (according to the Sony/Philips Red Book) encodes Audio as PCM 2-Channel, 16 Bit, with 44.1kHz Sampling Rate.
2) S/PDIF (Sony / Philips Digital IF) not surprisingly was designed to support transmitting the above spec (can also support DAT which uses 48kHz sampling + some SPDIF implemenations can also support up to 24 Bit).
3)There are many lossless formats/CODECS that aim to allow you to save the PCM stream in a file format that allows the orginal PCM stream to be faithfully recreated such as (from wikipedia):
* Apple Lossless - ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec)
* Direct Stream Transfer - DST
* Free Lossless Audio Codec - FLAC
* Meridian Lossless Packing - MLP
* Monkey's Audio - Monkey's Audio APE
* RealPlayer - RealAudio Lossless
* Shorten - SHN
* TTA - True Audio Lossless
* WavPack - WavPack lossless
* WMA Lossless - Windows Media Lossless
So for quality playback you are best playing either the original CD or a Lossless version of it, and trasmitting the 2Chn, 16Bit, 44.1mHz PCM stream over S/PDIF to your AV AMP for decoding (presuming it has better DACs - which I am sure it would!).
Likewise, I also use the S/PDIF connection to transmit the Digital Audio Steam from DVD's rips etc to my AV AMP (for decoding) as noted by wikipedia: "Another common use for the S/PDIF interface is to carry compressed digital audio as defined by the standard IEC 61937. This mode is used to connect the output of a DVD player to a home theater receiver that supports Dolby Digital or DTS surround sound."
Thanks
Nathan
Last edited by jmone; 05/27/06 12:26 AM.
