Upsampling DACS: Take the Pepsi Challenge

The following is the actual e-mail (in entirety) sent to me (this morning) by Resolution Audio in response to my question concerning upsampling / oversampling (the question was almost verbatim to my original question above). Indeed, there is no technical difference between upsampling and oversampling. The only difference I can discern is in the marketing. Indeed, digital filters can be very aggressive above the audio band without the adverse effects that analog brick-wall filters have. This is possible because of FIR (finite-impulse response) filters, which have constant group delay (zero phase effect vs. frequency). There is no physical realization of an FIR filter in analog. Using FIR digital filters allows the analog filter to be relaxed significantly, because the first "images" are located at much higher frequencies. In our cd55, we use a passive third order filter which is down only 0.2 dB at 20 kHz, yet the rejection of the images at 700 kHz is about 60 dB. And indeed, the digital filters do not create information that may have existed before the mic feed was converted to digital. Some external "upsamplers" may by their nature apply some other filter/eq, but this is independent of the a/d - d/a process. You are also correct regarding the delta-sigma dacs. These dacs are rated for maximum input rate, currently as high as 192 kHz. These converters all run at the output at much higher rates -- typically 12 MHz or thereabouts. The better ones from Analog Devices use extra filter stages when the input rate is lower. Essentially, the dacs run, say, 256x at 44.1 or 48 kHz, 128x at 88.2 or 96, and 64x at 176.4 or 192. This puts the noise modulator heart of the converter at the same frequency regardless of input. The best multi-bits, including the PCM1704, run upwards of 800 kHz, which allows 16x at 44.1 (and 8x at 96, and 4x at 192 input rates). In sum, your perception of "market jargon to draw interest" is dead-on. In addition to preying on the consumer base which generally does not have engineering degrees (and some manufacturers as well), these products offer the opportunity to sneak in digital eqs which will absolutely sound different. Better? That's a different story. Finally, we have just started talking to a dealer in Indiana. If all goes well, I'll pass along the info in a couple of days. Regards, Jeff Kalt Resolution Audio resaudio@ix.netcom.com

Carl, it seems that Resolution Audio wasn't frustrated by my question. Why must you?

Hi Greysquirrel-- excellent post, and thanks. Finally an answer to the oversampling versus upsampling question from someone who really does know. And I now admit that my original perception, that the two were different, was wrong. You may be interested to know that I emailed Theta Digital with essentially the same question. I got a reply from their Customer Services Rep. (not an engineer or designer); the Rep. asked their digital designers, and they flatly told him that "over-sampling and upsampling are the same thing", but implementation techniques vary. Cheers. Craig.

I guess Jeff Kalt is a better man than me. That's why I bought his CD player over a year ago. I guess since there's no difference in upsampling and oversampling, then there'd be no difference between my CD50, and the new CD55. I'm ok with that, too. Why aren't you, you little squirrely thing, you?

Again I advise reading August HFNRR, which describes the two techniques, although they can acheive the same end result, the "process" is different......read and find out the differences, they claim they can hear the difference