(educate a noob) can you teach me a little about bit depth and latency

bob1313134

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Mar 4, 2015
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I have win7, xonard dgx, dt 990 and desktop speakers. I have the option to change things such as bit depth, latency, sample rate. What do these terms mean? What's the best quality for audiophile headphones?

Also what does SPIF mean?

Really appreciate the help. Thank you!
 
Solution
In audio the bit depth is the size of the description of the audio signal taken at one time and the sampling rate is the number of descriptions taken over time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_bit_depth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_%28signal_processing%29
Latency describes the amount of delay when processing an audio signal. Doesn't apply to simple playback of audio but to recording and mixing multiple tracks with different delays due to different processing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latency_%28audio%29
SPDIF (Sony Philips Digital Interface) describes the standard coaxial RCA wire or toslink optical digital audio output is common on AV devices (CD player, cable box etc) and soundcards...
In audio the bit depth is the size of the description of the audio signal taken at one time and the sampling rate is the number of descriptions taken over time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_bit_depth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_%28signal_processing%29
Latency describes the amount of delay when processing an audio signal. Doesn't apply to simple playback of audio but to recording and mixing multiple tracks with different delays due to different processing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latency_%28audio%29
SPDIF (Sony Philips Digital Interface) describes the standard coaxial RCA wire or toslink optical digital audio output is common on AV devices (CD player, cable box etc) and soundcards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=S/PDIF
If you want to set your soundcard to upsample your audio files to a higher bit depth and sampling rate you might find that the sound quality will improve but it will not be the same as listening to a file that has a larger bit depth and sampling rate. These would have more actual information about the audio signal.
This site has links to some free downloads that you can listen to.
https://hifiduino.wordpress.com/free-hi-res-music/
 
Solution