#techreport regular Tuan managed to corral Thomas Loza, Intel’s Technology Initiative Manager, for a little Q&A session on the company’s new “Azalia” High Definition audio spec. Here’s a snippet:
Sudhian: What should we expect the Signal to Noise ratio to be on most HD Audio solutions? I know it’s up to the codec company but are there any imposed standards for SNR?
Thomas: No imposed levels are required by the HD Audio specification; however we’ll likely see these levels increase over time on the HD Audio interface. The PC industry is beginning to see value in increasing these levels to those traditionally used by the CE industry.
Intel may not even mandate a minimum codec sampling rate and resolution, which means we may see a number of HD audio implementations that don’t take full advantage of Azalia’s 32-bit/192kHz playback capabilities.