24-bit sound in games/consoles - when?

[beatle]

Originally posted by: Socio
If you use the audio out from sound card to a receiver that has digital coax or tosslink inputs then you don't have to wait for 24bit 96kHz sound you can have it now. You just need to get a MSB AUDIO DIRECTOR which upconverts analog to 24bit 96kHz.

AUDIO DIRECTOR

It is a bit expensive but if you want state of the art highend sound and do not want to wait, you can get it that way.

I never really understood the purpose of upmixing for listening. Maybe it gives you an edge when applying filters and changing the sound, but just like compression, it'll only sound as good as the original, at best. You can upmix any audio source that's playable through winamp to whatever you want (up to 24/96) for free using the SSRC plugin. I've used it and I can't tell any difference (as expected). Besides, unless you have Soundstorm, you can't output multichannel sound from a digital output unless it is already encoded as one, like Dolby Digital or DTS.