playing various audio formats on ALSA device accepting only one input type (S32LE)

Greetings,

I have an audio device that ALSA interprets as only accepting a 32-bit little-endian data format. And I would like to play "normal" 16-bit music to that device. To add one extra wrinkle: I am fairly certain this device is a 24-bit audio device. It's the miniDSP usbstreamer B unit, and the product webpage describes it as 24-bit (with 32-bit inteal processor).

Is there a quick and effective way to convert the music on-the-fly, i.e. like when I call mplayer on the audio file? Ideally it would be something that could be put into the /var/lib/alsa/asound.conf file. Barring that, I want to drive this usb audio device by MPD, so if this could be done in the mpd config file, great.

In case you are curious, here is the output of alsa-capabilities:

  1) USB Audio Class Digital alsa audio output interface `hw:1,0' - device name       = USBStreamer                                                 
 - interface name    = USB Audio                                                   
 - usb audio class   = 2 - isochronous asynchronous                                
 - character device  = /dev/snd/pcmC1D0p                                           
 - encoding formats  = S32_LE                                                      
 - monitor file      = /proc/asound/card1/pcm0p/sub0/hw_params                     
 - stream file       = /proc/asound/card1/stream0