* Native capability of sound card can be found from
cat /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/sub0/hw_params
* Decoding is done by the player itself, most probably the decoder
output format in your case would be 96khz, 24 bit little endian. If
the native rate of your card is only 44100Hz/48000Hz, it can not
support this.
* In order to play this format this has to be downsampled. The
downsamping could be done either by 1) the player itself, but it
completely depends upon the features and capabilities of the player or
2)by the (alsa) driver.
So these are your options.
* Try out different players as Camaleón suggested.
* Many players allow you to specify the output audio device.
Try "plughw:0,0" instead of the default one. This is a special device
given by alsa to do audio processing.
Another possibility would be to down-sample the file and then play it with mocp. How does one down-sample a .WAV file?
I tried "mplayer -ao plughw:0,0 file.mp3" but I got:
No such audio driver 'plughw'
No such audio driver '0'
Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.
Audio: no sound