Configuring Linux ALSA/Pulseaudio for best sound Options

[chickpea23]

So I have been listening to a bunch of hokum and voodoo at some other head hifi forum where abx testing is banned and I need some reeducation.

I run linux at home and I use kde. As I understand little about sound and how all the parts of the linux sound system work together, I would like to help to make sure that my sound is being output in the best fidelity possible.

So I used KDE that means I have the phonon sound system on top of the pulseaudio sound server on top of the ALSA sound system (whew!).

My onboard soundcard is an HDA-Intel Realtek ALC275 that does 16/24 bitrate and 44.1-192 sampling.

So most of my music is in 16/44.1 FLAC format, but some is 24/96 FLAC.

I use amarok and deadbeef to play my music.

I just want to make sure that I am not doing any resampling that will introduce any distortion or noise.

Sorry if this a topic that has been answered numerous times, but I searched and couldn't find anything that helped answer this.

Thanks for the input.

[skamp]

If, like me, you have a need for gapless playing, then finding a solution that is both gapless and avoids resampling is quite hard

Deadbeef is one player that's gapless and can play without resampling. Whether your sound card supports the sample rates you throw at it, is another story.

What about wine + foobar2000?

On my setup, wine + foobar2000 resamples at 44.1 kHz, I haven't figured out why yet.