Why you want upsampling and upconversion in a server and why it sounds way better!

While I enjoy Dave and Troy’s posts and listening opinions, on this one I’m also going to have to disagree.

As a video pro I can say that analog video cannot compare in any way to digital video. However we all know that analog audio still can be be very high quality. And for instruments like drums, analog is the preferred way of recording on most high end rock albums - the analog is then brought into Protools. No one is using analog video anymore.

As far as upsampling - I’ve found that the native sample rate sounds best, when done in the computer.

Oversampling in the DAC ( or like PS audio DS that uprez to DSD) seems to be more successful. 

However I do remember on the old PS Audio PerfectWave, when they rolled out the nativeX mode option, it  sounded better than oversampling, which many of us were using before the NativeX proved superior.

I have to agree with many of you. At first listen, upsampling seems to make things sound much better, smoother, more analog and natural. But continued critical listening reveals issues of unnatural, fatiguing sound that eventually has me running back to a native bitrate. Ideally, I've found that a 24/96 native recording played back without up- or down-sampling seems to be the sweet spot. But I listen to thousands of well-recorded 16/24 CD's ripped to my server that sound so great I never want for more. A well-recorded Redbook CD is a wonder to hear.

That being said, in many cases streaming music sources can sound better upsasmpled. And mp3 files, at any bitrate, sound much better upsampled to at least 24/96. With good upsampling mp3 can almost sound listenable.

My impressions of this are not limited by equipment, or source materials. I've tried this experiment on the highest of high-end DAC's, servers, CD transports, etc. in world-class reference-quality systems, with every bitrate and quality of recording, and the issues always eventually reveal themselves.

On my setup I listen to everything through my server at native bitrate, with NO digital manipulation (delays, EQ, balance controls, etc.). Over thousands of hours of listening I've come to the conclusion that I want to hear what was recorded, as it was recorded, warts and all. I don't want a polished turd ...I'd rather know it's a turd and learn to live with that. In my collection I have many great perfomances that were recorded horribly. I'm OK with that, because my great performances that were recorded well sound like heaven.

The more resolution your room and system provide, the easier it is to hear these differences. In an acoustically isolated high-end system the fatigue of upsampling is impossible to ignore. At least that's been my experience...

I use Roon to upsample my Lumin T2 playback to DSD 512.

Well, that's an interesting idea I should try. I've been upsampling PCM to PCM, not to DSD.  So far it wasn't really worth it. Thanks @tuberist for the suggestion.

tom6897
cal3713
lalitk
erik_squires
rossb
emailists
audiophilenm

Ditto from me too, up/over/sideways sampling all BS, just another way to sell more dacs to the gullible..
Should just have a good listen to Redbook 16/44 PCM converted through a "good" discrete R2R Multibit nos dac

Cheers George

So I just tried upsampling to DSD 128. It takes up about 5-10x more CPU in the Roon server, I think this is as high as I can go with my pokey A10 CPU.

My DAC (Mytek Brooklyn) has issues switching sample rates. Sometimes it glitches, which is annoying when going from my personal library to MQA/Tidal to internet radio. It doesn't happen every time, but it is annoying, so sample rate converting to a common standard removes this issue.

I'll see if it sounds any better to me. :)

Best,

E