I was looking at the Alesis iO|2 USB audio interface. It seems like a nice device, especially since it appears to comply to both the USB-audio as well as the USB-MIDI standard, see: http://www.linuxquestions.org/ questions/linux-hardware-18/2-soundcards-alesis-io|2-and-nvidia-ck804-512025/
However, it appears to limit audio to 24-bits @ 44.1/48kHz. To my understanding, applications accessing this device through libsndio will use its native resolution. For applications requiring 16-bit audio I could run an aucat server on top of this device. According to BUGS in aucat(1), aucat uses 16-bit processing. Does that mean that aucat will always record/playback only the 16 most significant bits for resolutions > 16 bit (always limiting the dynamic range) ? Apart from limiting the dynamic range, I was wondering if a pure 24-bit device could potentially be troublesome in any way. e.g. will running an aucat server in 16-bit mode add any kind of additional distortion or noise, or can i expect it to behave as a device doing 16-bits @ 44.1/48kHz ? Will applications work without issues ?
