I’m having a hard time with wondering why some dacs and soundcards that support 96KHZ as max but only work at 48Khz as a max and some 192 dacs or internal Soundcards but only seem to work at 96khz. I bought a syba USB dac which supports 96khz but only works at 48Khz using Linux.
The most likely reason would be that they use a proprietary USB protocol for high sample rate use and are not USB Audio Class 2.0 compliant. Look for USB Audio 2.0 in the spec sheet, or check to see if they claim that high sample rate use is supported by iOS or Mac OS. If iOS only supports 48kHz that would be a flag that high sample rates are not USB class compliant.
If that’s the case then that really sucks. I’ll have to figure what to do. I’ll try to get a refund on my order maybe but I’m not sure which dac will work without testing them somehow
There are a lot of resources online for which soundcards will work with Linux. My first step of research everytime I buy a soundcard is first find a list of what people say works, and then pick one based on the options I am looking for. The entire Focusrite Scarlett series will work and they go up to 96k sample rates.
You did not say which specific model. I had not heard of Syba DAC’s before, but the first one I see on Amazon says “no drivers required” which could imply either audio class 2 compliant (if no drivers required means on iOS or Mac OS) or could mean audio class 1 compliant, i.e. 16 bit 48kHz max if no drivers mean on Windows 7.
I am not sure which model you have, but the UAU19A user manual says “For Mac OS, no driver installation is required” after the section on installing Windows drivers, so I would think that model is audio class 2 compliant, which will work with linux.
The UAU11A, which is the first model which comes up when searching Amazon, does not have a user manual available on the SybaSonic web site, but the product page does say it uses a Via VT1630A controller, and the VT1630A product page says “VT1630A supports USB Audio Class 1.0,” which means only 16 bit and up to 48kHz on Linux. Can go higher on Windows but only with a proprietary (not USB class compliant) driver.
The key feature you want to look for is audio class 2.0 compliant. If it specifically says “class 2.0 compliant” somewhere it will work fine with Linux.