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"Native" 192 vs Upsampled 192 quality?

Hi,

I have a Musical Fidelity M1DAC. It's hooked up to my CD player via coaxial and to my Musical Fidelity V-Link (which converts USB to SPDIF) via TOSLINK. The V-Link grabs the output from my MacBook Pro's USB out.

I purchased a few albums from HD Tracks.com today. One of them, Norah Jones "Come Away With Me" is in 192/24 format. I also have the album on Redbook CD.

Now, then: the HD downloads sound marvelous. But it occurred to me that the M1DAC upsamples everything to 192, anyway. So, in theory, should there be a sonic difference between the sound of a native 192 kHz file playing out of the DAC, and, say the 44.1 kHz CD file upsampled in the DAC to 192 kHz?

I haven't had the chance yet to A/B the two formats, but I'm curious about the theory.
rebbi
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
How can you compare when your CD data is not 24 bit? Also, the fact that DAC outputs it at 192kHz is not necessarily a good thing, since D/A converter chips have higher THD at higher sample rates. For that reason Benchmark DAC1 outputs only 110kHz on 192kHz D/A chip.

44.1kHz meets Nyquist requirement but only for continuous waves. For short bursts especially at high frequency it cannot be perfectly corrected by SINC functions.

Hearing the difference between 24/192 and 16/44.1 would depend on processing done by your DAC, resolution and transparency of your system, acoustic properties of your room and your hearing. I wouldn't be able to tell the difference, I'm sure, but suspect that many professional musicians could. Then again, there are articles proving that 24/192 playback could actually sound worse than 16/44.1

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
rebbi OP
1,326 posts
 
In any case, it turns out that the MF V-Link (the original model) can't pass files above 92 kHz to the DAC. So I've upgraded to the MF V-Link 192, which does handle 192 kHz files. My HD Tracks 192 kHz downloads sound glorious. :-)
bombaywalla's avatar
bombaywalla
1,958 posts
 
Kijanki is on the right track here according to me. A native 24/192 file is quite different sonically from an upsampled 16/44.1 --> 24/192 file. This is because the upsampled file is smoothed out by the digital filter in the DAC once the upsampling process from 16/44.1 is completed. This smoothing filter in the DAC is an algorithm that Musical Fidelity thinks is the correct one. If you get a Wadia DAC then Wadia will have its own algorithm & if you get a 3rd manuf, say, Meridian then Meridian will have its own algorithm in that digital filter. It will vary by manuf & it will hard to say whose spin on the digital filter is "correct" - each will have its pros & cons.
So, basically, what you are telling us is that you prefer the native 24/192 to the digital filter in your Musical Fidelity. It's entirely possible that the more money you spend on an upsampling DAC the probability could be high that you prefer their digital filter to the native 24/192 sonics???
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