non over sampling DAC better than 24/96 or192 DAC?

In short nos is better. You will have to take a few careful listening sessions to perceive the undenying ease and naturalness of nos. If you value a "wow factor" of "engineered enhancement" then you will prefer up/oversampling. I have heard, and own both and admit that up/oversampling has some qualities that are possibly easy to find instantly appealing. The absolute naturalness of nos though is my preference. Hope this helps.

IMHO they both have strengths and weakness. You must hear them both in your system and decide for yourself what will be better in that particular system. I've heard bad upsampling and good.

That being said I have one of the nuttiest combinations. I use a NOS DAC(no digital or analog filters) fed by a Upsampling processor. I find it a good compromise between both.You get the space and depth of upsampling with the naturalness and organic qualities of NOS. Like I said nutty but it sure sounds great!!!

I had a lovely modified upsampling Electrocompaniet ECD-1 at home for audition several weeks. Basically the best digital playback I've heard. Adding the upsampling to my NOS DAC brought it to a whisper of what I got from this better than $3500 Dac. Which is said to compete with Dacs several times its price.

So keep an open mind and experiment ..you never know what you'll stumble upon. :-)

Have fun!!!

I think it also depends on what you'll be listening to. I had the opportunity compare the Lite Dac-AH to their own solid-state oversampling Dac (the Dac-38). The conclusion I came to is that the Dac-Ah did some things better (I don't think I've ever heard a Dac that does acoustic guitar and percussion quite as well as the Dac-Ah; it's very "holographic" when it's on) and the Dac-38 did some things better (vocals were more "liquid", it's significantly more forgiving of poorly recorded material, 2-channel DVD-Audio stuff was unbelievable).

Now, that's purely anecdotal; like everything in high-end audio, I'm sure both designs can sound great if implemented well, and like Gmood said, it probably depends on your system's strenghts and weaknesses as well.

It is in my opinion a matter of taste. NOS DACs sound natural and fluid with very good ambience retrieval and microdynamics. They have smaller soundstage though. Up- and oversampling DACs sound bold, powerful in the bass and have wide soundstage. They have generally better macrodynamics in comparison to the NOS DACs.

Chris

it is hard to generalize since the sound of a cd player is the sum of all its parts.

my experience both in my own system and ces, is that too much over sampling and upsampling is not pleasant to the ears.

persoannly i prefer 18 or 20 bit players.