upsampling?

I use a dCs Purcell. I have found it to improve virtually all of the CDs I've played through it in the past year. When I bought it, my dealer had mixed feelings about it, feeling he liked some discs better with it and some better without. Don't know if he still feels this way. I'm not sure why, but since my feelings are that the Purcell, among other things, improves the bass and makes for a richer harmonic presentation, a CD with an abundance of one or both of those two attributes (a rare thing, in the case of the harmonics) might sound too bass heavy or muddy in the midrange through this upsampler. As I said, I haven't really found this in my listening, which is mostly classical, with some rock, folk and jazz thrown in, except perhaps some earlier Telarcs which had a tilt towards the bass. As for the second part of your question, the upsampler won't save a poorly done CD (try any overcooked pop recording or early digital classical recording from DG or Columbia), and I've found the best recordings (Reference, Harmonia Mundi, Delos) to sound even better, so I think that it certainly doesn't even the playing field between good and bad recordings, and may even widen the field a little (i.e., more improvement on good recordings than on bad ones). Just my observations; curious to see how others hear it.

I own the Delius and the Purcell. Listening at 24/192 spoils one very quickly. Even my wife can't stand listening at 16/44.1 anymore. If you have a chance to audition these two together - do it. dCS is also planning on releasing a new product later this year named the Grieg. The Grieg is a Purcell that allows analog and phono inputs, which can be fed to the Delius or Elgar at 24/192! For some more info check out http://www.enjoythemusic.com/ces2001/preshow/page2.htm - Scroll down to the dCS announcment.

Last summer, we had long, and often heated, threads about the difference)s) between "upsampling" and the more conventional term for increasing the digital sample rate, ie "over sampling", and it seems they are essentially the same thing. So any good DAC or CD player whether touting upsampling or not should sound good. Levinson DACs sample at a rate of about 352 KHZ, and they they call it 8X oversampling. When I asked Madrigal about it, they said "do you want us to lower our standards to 192 KHZ?". If you don't believe this, check with Resolution Audion, Muse Electronics, Theta Digital, Madrigal Audio and other digital manufacturers. Even JA of Stereophile finally admitted that they are essentially the same. As to sound quality differences, it's just a matter of the way the technology is implemented. And yes, at the cost, dCS gear should be excellent. I personally use the ML 360S and it also is excellent. I Don't really want to stir up a heated debate on this again, so if you want, just look up threads under upsampling. Cheers. Craig.

Garfish, Agreed - Pick your semantics upsampling or oversampling. Hoe I didn't come off as upsampling was the only way to go. As far as dCS and Levinson is concerned, they are both great gear. Cheers - Dan

I think that it is real funny that because dCS was the first to quote 24/192 most digital manufactures use that as the number to beat. Garfish says that Levinson is quoting 352, there are others quoting 384 and 768. All these high numbers are strictly fuzzy math. Here’s how they get to it…44K multiplied by 8 times oversampling and you get 352. Then there is 96K multiplied by 4 times oversampling and you get 384. Then there is 96K multiplied by 8 times oversampling and you get 768. This may all sound logical until you do the apples to apples comparison. None of the above companies quoting these high numbers can accept a signal above 96K. dCS accepts a 192 signal and for an apples to apples comparison then oversamples 64 times. So lets look at the math. 192 multiplied by 64 times oversampling and you get 12,288. So if you are going to buy into the marketing hype what would you rather have: 24/352, 24/384, 24/768, or 24/12288?

The bottom line is how each dac sounds, not the fuzzy math. Don’t buy into the marketing and mathematical figures, go out, listen for yourself, and let your ears be the judge.