CRAS - bitperfect to USB DAC?

[Rudolf Fischer]

I have a new Lenovo Chromebook 14 Plus. It is a wonderful laptop, great OLED screen, powerful Mediatek CPU, good keyboard. 

Connecting a USB DAC, I see that all audio gets resampled to 48kHz. I guess this is the default used by Chromium OS Audio Server (CRAS).

Is there any way to get CRAS to bypass resampling and send bitperfect audio to a DAC connected via USB?

[Anway]

You can pass control of your USB DAC directly to the Linux virtual machine running on your Chromebook. Inside Linux, you can use audiophile players (like MPD or DeaDBeeF) to talk directly to the hardware (ALSA), bypassing CRAS.

The only way to get bit-perfect audio is to use the Linux (Crostini) container:

1. Enable Linux in ChromeOS Settings.

2. Pass your USB DAC to Linux (Settings > Linux > Manage USB devices).

3. Use a Linux music player (like DeaDBeeF) configured to use ALSA output.

This completely bypasses the ChromeOS audio mixer.

[Rudolf Fischer]

Thanks, I may give that a try