Upsampling and Stereophile


Last summer there were several threads here on Audiogon about digital upsampling and over sampling (a couple long and heated), but the opinion(s) of the audio press were conspicuously absent. In the Dec. 2000 issue of Stereophile, page 3, John Atkinson, has an editorial explaining their position on this in his "As We See It" column, page 3. I encourage everyone interested in the subject to look up the article. I have excerpted the following quotes that I think sums up Stereophile's opinion, and that may pique your interst: (1) "....the audio industry has settled on an 8X-oversampling ratio, the 44.1 kHZ CD data being converted to a 352.8 kHZ datastream before D/A conversion." (2) "no matter how good these upsampling products can sound-- and the dCS, Bel Canto, and MSB products indeed sound excellent-- there is no conceptual difference between them and traditional CD playback systems. I am now convinced that the sonic differences we have heard and reported on are merely due to the different choices in digital filters made by the designers of these products." (3) "In the meantime don't buy a digital product because it has "24/96" emblazoned on its front panel. Buy it because it makes your CDs sound great". Cheers. Craig.
garfish
Also would like to note that Tres Hombres has my favorite inner cover artwork/photo of all time. I drool just thinking about it. Had it tacked up on my wall for years, I think right in between my Linda Rondstat and Farah Fawcett posters. Those were the days...
Garfish, that a product has "24/96 emblazoned" does not mean it upsamples. I don't believe in upsampling yet I have a 24/96 product and I definitely, definitely recommend 24/96.
Joe; You're right re: 24/96-- that is just part of the Stereophile quote. I too have a DAC (ML 360S) that is capable of decoding a 24/96 digital stream. But to use the 24/96 capability (in my DAC) the transport would have to output a 24/96 digital stream to the DAC, and I don't know of any 24/96 players that (at least for music only) presently do that? Cheers. Craig.
Dan; cover art on ZZ Top's "Eliminator" Lp is great too. In fact I'm going to frame it-- The whole frontend of an early hotrod fills the cover. Craig.
I'd like to get some old ZZ Top on vinyl. If you guys have any extra mint copies, you could sell them to me. I searched for live ZZ Top on Napster a couple months ago, and instead found a bunch of rare Van Halen covers of ZZ Top songs (with DLR fronting), and also Boston live bootlegs. Sonically aren't much, but it IS "about the music, afterall", and I do enjoy them. The Boston bootlegs are recorded where one channel is facing the FOH speakers, the other is facing away, and you can hear people close to the mikes clapping and having a good time. Maybe some of you have heard these before? I had heard the Boston ones on the radio a few years ago, I think.