Upsampling, Can there be too much?


I've owned the Chord Mscaler for a year and loved it, but recently added two new components that have built in upsampling: The Aurender W20SE, and the Jay's Audio CDT3-MK3. I find the Mscaler works well with the Aurender's built in upsampling, but not the Jay's.

 

Conclusion: not upsampling the Jay's, and standard redbook 16-bit 44Khz to the Mscaler gives incredible 24-bit 705Khz to the Hugo TT2 DAC for finest sound.

 

With multiple upsamplers in a chain has anyone gotten static, popping, smearing, or any kind of distortion from too much upsampling?

128x128brandonhifi

My experience is it depends on the track, and yes, there can be too much of a good thing. 

@vonhelmholtz 
The Chord Mscaler only has 1 USB, 2 optical toslink, and 2 BNC inputs. The W20SE has usb bit perfect output only so no upsampling possible with USB output. I find the upsampling on the Aurender using my BNC Transparent XL cable far superior to USB. So I use both BNCs for the Aurender and Jay’s.

Listen to an Audio Note DAC, and you'll know that there can be too much. 

I used to own the lowest model of Audio Note UK DAC,. I can't recall the model, but it used tiny tubes that were soldered in. It was a revelation at the time. I now have an Audio Note Kits 2.1 Signature, professionally built and upgraded by them a few months ago. I would not go back to a design that uses oversampling, unless it was a dcs or something of that caliber, which I could never afford.

After using oversampling players for years, the non-oversampling sounded much more natural and fluid. At the level that I can afford, it sounds more like the real event coming through the speakers rather than a cobbled together re-creation. I can't imagine how good the top-level Audio Note DAC's are.