Everything you do electronically or via software, changes the music from what the artist intended
it to sound like...
I use alsa precisely because it doesn't do those things by default, it doesn't re-sample...
But people who have never heard pure analog, tend to think digital is somehow better...

It is impossible to disable resampling in ALSA. You can only change the default resampler of ALSA. Since ALSA was designed for semi-deaf audiophiles, it does not permit "exclusive mode". ALSA seems to be unique in this sense. For example, OSS4 automatically enables "exclusive mode" for professional sound cards which have built-in hardware mixer. Otherwise, "exclusive mode" can be enabled in OSS4 config.

NOTE: Because of dementia, it might be difficult to understand how to configure the fftrate plugin. It is recommended to set the fftrate resampler to maximum sample rate supported by your sound card (or HDA codec), because it is likely to provide much better quality of resampling than the HW resampler of your sound card (or HDA codec). That is why, perhaps, there is a belief that the fftrate codec somehow improves the quality of audio files.

foobar2000 for Mac change log

2.24.6 released on 2025-07-06
...

2.5 released on 2023-04-26
...
Exclusive audio output support.

_https://www.foobar2000.org/changelog-mac

Exclusive mode allows audio applications to take exclusive control of audio devices, bypassing the software mixer of sound system. It also implies that all sorts of software resampling and format conversion performed by the sound system are disabled. It means that audio formats, which are not supported by your sound card, cannot be played in "exclusive mode".

To find out which audio formats are supported by your Mac's built-in hardware DAC use the "Audio Midi Setup" app, which is located in the "Utilities" subfolder of your "Applications" folder.
_https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/audio-midi-setup/ams59f301fda/mac
You may need to convert your audio files to "96 kHz 32-bit Float" with Petrov's pcm_conv

NOTE: Such esoteric audio tests do not make any sense, if you do not trust your ears.

"God created man in his own image and likeness". Human ears and human eyes are divine instruments. It is not difficult to verify, if you trust your senses.

"Our senses are gifts from God". The slaves of cargo cult science can easily fool themselves simply because they do not trust their senses.

Feynman, Richard P. (June 1974). "Cargo Cult Science" (PDF). California Institute of Technology.
_http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf
_https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf
_https://paulsteinhardt.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/CargoCult.pdf

Feynman's emphasis on "to see if it worked" is an instruction to trust your senses, the gifts from God, which enable you to see and understand. This is the key point. Otherwise, Feynman's essay "Cargo Cult Science" is just another attempt to derive a true theory from a false assumption. If you refuse to trust your senses, you inevitably fall in the trap of Agrippa's trilemma (Agrippa the Skeptic)
_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrippa_the_Skeptic
_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma

NOTE: The idea that "If senses are not truthful, any knowledge cannot be justified" is a foundational concept in philosophy, particularly in epistemology, explored by thinkers like Plato and Descartes.
If ALSA is playing crap, do not trust your ears, and read Descartes.

Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes
_https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/descartes/1639/meditations.htm

One may wonder what is the difference between Feynman's "method... for separating the ideas" and the method of trial and error invented in the Stone Age. It was a speech for those who know what he is speaking about. It was a commencement address for the initiated into the mystery of "physical intuition". It cannot be comprehended by the slaves of ALSA.

An assumption that an oscilloscope was not misused may not stand skepticism. If you do not know how to fool yourself with "scientific instruments", try to read Feynman's essay "Cargo Cult Science". One may try to believe that the mass production of "digital crap" is a sort of "fair trade".

If you do to trust your senses, you may notice that you are "missing something essential". For example, it may become obvious that "any purported justification of all knowledge must fail, because it must start from a position of no knowledge" _https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma
Such logical problems might be difficult to solve, but, in any case, the slaves of "knowledge" are not supposed to have their own knowledge, they have to conform to approved opinions and beliefs. They cannot possess own knowledge simply because they do not trust their senses and their ability to think. "A wiki is useless", if it is not approved.

Trusting your problem-solving skills and your capacity for thought are essential for effectively defining issues, analyzing them, brainstorming solutions, and making decisions to arrive at the best course of action. Believing in your ability to find solutions encourages you to tackle difficult problems rather than avoid them.

I'm starting to have a theory

Even with "perfect hearing" no one perfectly hears the alleged range of human hearing for 20-20k hz.

Use True Tone on Mac

True Tone technology makes the images on your Retina display and Touch Bar appear more natural.

The True Tone technology in Mac computers, Studio Display, and Apple Pro Display XDR uses advanced multichannel sensors to adjust the color and intensity of your display and Touch Bar to match the ambient light so that images appear more natural.
_https://support.apple.com/en-us/102147

I think your posts are giving people dementia.

A BlueALSA PCM can only be opened by one process at a time. This can be inconvenient in many scenarios. For example, some audio applications keep the ALSA PCM device open, even when they are not actively streaming any audio, and so it is necessary to close each application before any other can use the device; desktop systems may like to emit system sounds while music is playing; etc.

ALSA provides a solution to this for hardware cards with the "dmix" plugin. That plugin allows multiple open connections, mixes the streams together, then sends the result as a single stream to the hardware device. Unfortunately dmix works as a front-end only with hardware (ie "hw" type) devices, and not with any other plugin types such as BlueALSA.

So it is not possible to configure BlueALSA as a backend device for dmix. We are forced to find an indirect method; that is, use a "hw" device that can forward the mixed stream on to a BlueALSA PCM. Fortunately, ALSA provides just such a device, the "Loopback" device, which is a kernel driver that implements a virtual sound card.

This wiki article describes one way that BlueALSA can be used with the ALSA Loopback device and the dmix plugin to achieve mixing of multiple audio streams into a single BlueALSA playback PCM.
_https://github-wiki-see.page/m/Arkq/bluez-alsa/wiki/Using-bluealsa-with-dmix

BlueALSA also allows to capture audio from the connected Bluetooth device. To do so, one has to use the capture PCM device, e.g.:

arecord -D bluealsa -f s16_le -c 2 -r 48000 capture.wav 

_https://github.com/arkq/bluez-alsa

dmix (with fftrate) makes the difference.

mpv on Devuan with ALSA software mixer (dmix) configured with Petrov's arateconf
(without pulseaudio and pipewire).
Soundcard iMic USB supports only 16bit 48kHz audio format.

pw.conf is a sort of pipewire config (it is not installed).

Bug#1038394: libpipewire
_https://groups.google.com/g/linux.debian.bugs.dist/c/JCDQBHGkxMY
_https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/pipewire/-/issues/1

$ mpv 2>&1 *.mp4
 (+) Video --vid=1 (*) (h264 848x480 25.000fps)
 (+) Audio --aid=1 (*) (aac 2ch 44100Hz)
[W][33501.807636] pw.conf      | [          conf.c:  939 try_load_conf()] can't load config client.conf: No such file or directory
[E][33501.807661] pw.conf      | [          conf.c:  963 pw_conf_load_conf_for_context()] can't load default config client.conf: No such file or directory
Input:  44100 Hz, 2 ch, 's32_le' (0xa): dummy = 0, period = 1764
Output: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, 's16_le' (0x2): dummy = 0, period = 1920
Rates:  44100 --> 48000 (J: 0.00%, T: FFT, W: Vorbis)
Ok.

AO: [alsa] 44100Hz stereo 2ch float
VO: [gpu] 848x480 => 853x480 yuv420p
(Paused) AV: 00:00:17 / 00:10:49 (3%) A-V: -0.000 

$ celluloid 2>&1
[W][32816.655765] pw.conf      | [          conf.c:  939 try_load_conf()] can't load config client.conf: No such file or directory
[E][32816.655785] pw.conf      | [          conf.c:  963 pw_conf_load_conf_for_context()] can't load default config client.conf: No such file or directory
Input:  44100 Hz, 2 ch, 's32_le' (0xa): dummy = 0, period = 1764
Output: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, 's16_le' (0x2): dummy = 0, period = 1920
Rates:  44100 --> 48000 (J: 0.00%, T: FFT, W: Vorbis)
Ok. 

$ mediainfo *.mp4 | grep Audio -A9
Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 10 min 49 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 128 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 kHz
Frame rate                               : 43.066 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy

sudo apt install mediainfo

@tux_99, Dude! That's hot stuff, nice find!! Exactly the kind of thing we need.