Upsampling. Truth vs Marketing


Has anyone done a blind AB test of the up sampling capabilities of a player? If so what was the result?

The reason why I ask because all the players and converters that do support up sampling are going to 192 from 44.1. And that is just plane wrong.

This would add huge amount of interpolation errors to the conversion. And should sound like crap, compared.
I understand why MFG don't go the logical 176.4khz, because once again they would have to write more software.

All and all I would like to hear from users who think their player sounds better playing Redbook (44.1) up sampled to 192. I have never come across a sample rate converter chip that does this well sonically and if one exist, then it is truly a silver bullet, then again....44.1 should only be up sample to 88.2 or 176.4 unless you can first go to many GHz and then down sample it 192, even then you will have interpolation errors.
izsakmixer

Showing 2 responses by pabelson

The connect-the-dots metaphor is really unfortunate, because a lot of audiophiles buy into the idea that that's what a DAC does. But reconstructing an analog wave is nothing like connecting dots. More dots DOES make it easier to DRAW a wave. But as long as you have enough samples for the bandwidth, a DAC can reconstruct that wave without more information.

(BTW, the example given above didn't have enough information to do so, because it called for only two samples per cycle. You need fractionally more than two to reconstruct the wave properly.)

Imagine that, instead of a wave, you were trying to trace a straight line. The more dots you had, the easier it would be to do this freehand. But a graphing calculator would only need two points.
Not quite, Eldartford. A digital system cannot accurately reconstruct a wave that is exactly half the sampling frequency. That's why I said the sampling rate had to be fractionally higher (granted, a very tiny fraction) than twice the highest frequency. In the example given, there were exactly two samples per cycle, and that wouldn't work.

And just what is it you think is "the biggest problem with redbook CDs"?