Beginning with Android 5.0 (Lollipop) and continuing through Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) and beyond, the internal audio data path is gradually being widened along several dimensions: bit depth, dynamic range, sample rate, and channel count.
Many internal calculations are now performed in single-precision floating-point, which has a greater effective bit depth of 24-25 bits and much wider dynamic range than before. Sample rates up to 96kHz or 192 kHz are supported provided the endpoints
(source and sink) specify the appropriate sample rate in their configuration. The resampler implementations have been rewritten for improved quality and speed. There is now better support for multi-channel, especially for indexed (non-positional) audio and on input side.
However, these improvements are not complete as of 6.0. There is still more work to do, for example the effects and some of the file parsers and codecs (encoders and decoders) are not yet upgraded, and multi-channel over OpenSL ES API is not yet as capable as the Java API.
It is up to each device OEM to configure the endpoints, so not all endpoints will make use of the wider paths.
Historically, floating-point was slower than integer arithmetic. But in modern processors the use of floating-point for internal math
does not significantly decrease CPU performance, and in fact in some cases it can be faster than integer math.
However, higher sample rates (e.g. 96 kHz and above) do use more CPU and power than lower sample rates (44.1 or 48 kHz). Higher sample rates are generally accepted to be useful during pro audio recording and editing. The value of high sample rates for playback/listening by ordinary users is controversial, especially if the endpoints are analog or have the kind of small transducers typical on mobile devices. Given the higher power consumption and controversy, device OEMs may choose to not implement high sample rates for the local transducers and only support high sample rates over USB.
Here are links to some more resources on these topics:
Will it float? The glory and shame of floating-point audio
Google I/O 2014 - Building great multi-media experiences on Android
(0:42 to 3:57 are on the wider data path)
Data formats
https://source.android.com/devices/audio/data_formats.html
High-Performance audio on Android
https://googlesamples.github.io/android-audio-high-performance/
PS: Looks you have posted this on Android group, picked the answer from there only.
