[LAU] How do i play 24/96 and 24/192 bit files at native rates and verify that it's happening?

sound card: IntelHD
alsa version: 2.6.31-r6
pulseaudio version: 0.9.19
mpd version: 0.15.5
disto: gentoo amd64
Sound file format: Flac

Folks,

What i would like to be able to do is to play music files at their
native rates. I realize that my sound card's rates begin at 48khz, so
44.1khz files may have to be upsampled in any case. That's not
preferable but that's alright. However, i'd like to be able to play 96
khz files and 192 khz files at their respective rates with out resulting
to upsampling. If i have to upsample everything to 192khz to avoid
downsampling files to 48 khz i'll do that but it's not ideal.

So, i'm running an mpd player which feeds into pulse audio which feeds
into alsa. Do i need to configure all 3 to handle this or should it be
working "out of the box"?

I've looked around for some sort of display which will tell me at what
rate the files are being played in but i can't find one and i don't know
if for instance, mpd is passing them in 96 khz or 192 and pulse is down
converting, or if mpd and pulse are passing them in 96 khz or 192 and
alsa is down converting or something. How can i verify this is working
when it's set up? Going by ear may not be reliable.

Am i best off just setting up the system to upconvert to 192k? I think
that might cause distortion. Right? If so, i'd need set that up in mpd,
and pulse and alsa right?

Any ideas or pointers would be appreciated. I'll happily give more info
if wanted.

Thanks a lot,

-- 
Bearcat M. Şandor
Cell: 406.210.3500
Jabber/xmpp/gtalk/email: bearcat@feline-soul.net
MSN: bearcatsandor@hotmail.com
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