[MPlayer-users] What output driver for USB DAC?

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Sun, Feb 04, 2018 at 11:06:53AM +0000, John Long wrote:
> On Sun, 2018-02-04 at 10:39 +0000, Andy Furniss wrote:
> > John Long wrote:
> > > Does anybody know how to get mplayer to send the correct signal to
> > > a
> > > USB DAC?
> > > 
> > > If I play the file normally (mplayer filename) it appears mplayer
> > > decodes the file before sending it to the DAC. I am trying to get
> > > mplayer to send whatever type of signal to the DAC it needs so that
> > > the
> > >   DAC itself will decode the music, not mplayer.
> > 
> > If it's a DAC then it won't decode the many types of compressed
> > audio 
> > that mplayer/ffmpeg can.
> 
> That's ok, it supports everything I need it to play which is DSD and
> FLAC.

I have some severe doubts about that.
For it to support FLAC, the playback application would need
to passthrough FLAC.
Which means someone needs to standardize a way to signal
that FLAC is supported for passthrough AND specify a passthrough
format.
Considering how rare FLAC is, I really don't think anyone
has done that.
(of course it also doesn't really make any difference at all
who decodes FLAC anyway, but that is a different point)