Digital idiot wants to KNOW: upsampling?


In my quest for "perfect sound forever" I see that the big rage is upsampling. So how does this work. (The Sine wave graphs in the mags look so pretty) I see D/A converters that accept 96/ ??? Does this mean some CD players put out this? and what if you have an output of 96/??? and you D/A is an old outdated one... does the 96 get downconverted to ??48 (So it seems in my Acdom GDA700?).
I want to gain some sort of understanding how these multiple rates mesh together. Or just point me to a site that helps? Also it seems some D/A's do the upsampling and some just 'accept' upsampled data. I am comfused. Help me (so I can spend another $3000 on a MSB Platinum and not get burned.)
elizabeth

Showing 1 response by onhwy61

Upsampling is a marketing term and the mathematical manipulation of the music signal is the same as standard oversampling techniques. The purpose of these resampling techniques is to allow the designer to use a gentler low-pass filter for attenuating the high band digital "mirror image" signal. There is also a process called word lenght interpolation which is usually done in conjunction with up/oversampling that changes the Red Book output 16 bit word up to a 24 bit format. It is important to note that no new musical information is added in this process, yet it does seem to slightly improve sound quality. There is no generally accepted explanation that explains this phonomena. The dCS website is a good reference on these issues.

As a practical matter, don't worry whether you equipment up, over and even no samples the digital signal. Well designed implementations of each design all sound excellent.

BTW, the MSB Platinum is a marvelous sounding unit. I use the Sony 333ES as a transport. When playing SACDs I feed the analog output of the Sony directly to an integrated amp. SACDs sound better than the Sony/MSB combo.