[John Savard]

I read the review of the Firefly DAC in the latest TAS, and so I decided to=
investigate purchasing a product in that category.

It turned out the Meridian Explorer, another very good one, was the one mos=
t easily available where I live.

Although following the standard installation instructions for setting it up=
yielded good results, I noticed one thing: when playing a video in VLC for=
which "codec information" told me the sound was sampled at 44100 kHz, the =
lights on the Explorer showed it was working with 192000 kHz data.

The technical reason for this is simple enough. Following the standard setu=
p instructions took me to a place in the Control Panel where I specified th=
at the Meridian was to allow exclusive mode, and give exclusive mode priori=
ty... and run at 192000 kHz (really kilosamples/sec, of course) when in sha=
red mode.

Now, I learned how to set up VLC so that it doesn't use the default audio o=
utput device, but that did not cause the data to go to the Meridian at the =
original rate, and there doesn't seem to be a way to request that VLC use e=
xclusive mode.

I saw a mention of a program called VLC launcher that can put VLC in exclus=
ive mode, but I couldn't find the right setting. Also, there's a program ca=
lled ReClock by SlySoft which they said in one forum was relevant - but it'=
s really meant to re-clock your video display for better DVD playback, so I=
'm not sure it that's what I want.

So my question is: have others here had experience with this issue, and wha=
t are the best choices of audio/video playback programs that allow exclusiv=
e mode in order to avoid unnecessary resampling of the audio output?

John Savard