The Problem:

When playing back 192kHz/24-bit FLAC files specifically, there is a very noticeable static/distortion. This does not happen with lower resolution files (44.1kHz, 48kHz, and 96kHz all sound perfectly fine)—it only occurs at 192kHz.

What I've already ruled out after extensive troubleshooting:

It's not resampling or clipping: At first, I thought this was the culprit, and I actually confirmed it with sox (samples were pegged at 1.0/-1.0). However, after forcing PipeWire to output the native 192kHz/16-bit signal without any resampling (verified by checking hw_params directly), the static remained exactly the same.

It's not the PipeWire graph or timing: I monitored the playback using pw-top; everything looks clean, zero errors, and buffer execution times are completely normal (ranging between 15-90 microseconds).

It's not a USB or hardware issue: No xruns detected, and dmesg shows absolutely no errors during playback.

It's not an exclusive access issue: I am using the standard PipeWire sink, not direct ALSA.

What I did find:

If I play the exact same file, on the same device, under the exact same bit-perfect conditions, but using VLC instead of Strawberry, it plays perfectly clean. No configuration changes whatsoever, literally the same file.

This leads me to believe the issue lies specifically within GStreamer (the backend engine used by Strawberry) when processing audio at this specific sample rate, rather than PipeWire, my DAC, or the USB interface.

Has anyone encountered a similar behavior with GStreamer + PipeWire at high sample rates? Is this a known bug in gst-plugin-pipewire or within some internal audio conversion element in GStreamer? I’ve switched to Audacious as a temporary workaround, but I'd really like to understand what is going on under the hood.

Thanks in advance!