Nice! I (ab)use FLAC to store waveform data that isn't audio, but compresses better using audio codecs than with general purpose compression algorithms. This will let me remove some hacks to compress 32-bit data as multiple channels.
Can't say I haven't been tempted.
The price of 10 sound cards will be enough to pay for a whole wafer.
* The sensor system wants to do unit conversion for me. This data doesn't really have 32-bits of dynamic range, but for archival purposes I'd like to store the exact bits without adding another quantization step - that can happen later.
* The sensor system combines multiple ADC channels HDR style. I'd rather get the raw readings and do the combining myself, but don't always have access to it.
* Some more advanced preprocessed results, akin to a GPS solution. Linear predictor based algorithms are perfect here since the full possible set of values does have high dynamic range, but the upper bits change very slowly.