Aspects of a method and/or system for processing high quality audio in a hardware audio CODEC for audio transmission are provided. In this regard, an audio signal may be down-sampled via a cascaded plurality of filters and sample rate converters in the hardware audio CODEC. Additionally, a portion of each sample of the audio signal may be selected based on an origin of the audio signal. The selected portion of each sample of the audio signal may comprise 16 or 18 bits. The selected portion may be determined based on a type, a class, a manufacturer identifier, and/or a model identifier of the origin the audio signal. Coefficients of the filters may be configured based on the origin of the audio signal. One or more of the filters may comprise one or more cascaded biquads. The sample rate converters may comprise one or more CIC decimation filters.