Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD


Hi All.

Putting together a reference level system.
My Source is predominantly standard 16/44 played from a MacMini using iTunes and Amarra. Some of my music is purchased from iTunes and the rest is ripped from standard CD's.
For my tastes in music, my high def catalogues are still limited; so Redbook 16/44 will be my primary source for quite some time.

I'm not spending DCS or MSB money. But $15-20k retail is not out of the question.

Upsampling vs non-upsampling?
USB input vs SPDIF?

All opinions welcome.

And I know I need to hear them, but getting these ultra $$$ DAC's into your house for an audition ain't easy.

Looking for musical, emotional, engaging, accurate , with great dimension. Not looking for analytical and sterile.
mattnshilp
@gdhal

The logic for upsampling Redbook is well documented and justified. Redbook requires a Nyquist filter at 22KHz to prevent aliasing or image noise from 22 to 44 KHz from being included in the analog output signal. Unfortunately a sharp filter at 22 KHz is guaranteed to affect the audible sound due to the proximity of this sharp filter to the audio band. By upsampling you preserve the entire original digital information contained in redbook but you push the Nyquist far up to 96KHz for a 192KHz sample rate. This makes filtering so much easier and entirely benign. Going up to 24 bit also preserves the entire Redbook signal.

The key understanding is that upsampling preserves ALL the original information and so does an increase in bit depth from 16 to 24.

This is very different from down sampling which can alter the original audio (stuff is thrown away) and normally down sampling requires careful processing and filtering to preserve the audio (dithering being a very important processing step in down sampling, as simple truncation is highly distorting)

The key to understand is that upsampling is benign but it makes the job of filtering aliased or ghost frequencies much much more accurate. Every DAC must filter out these “aliasing” artifacts as it is inherent in sampling theory (to accurately capture a signal you need a minimum of two samples per wavelength) - anything that is sampled less than twice will appear as “ghosts” or aliasing artifacts (and these artifacts sit at frequencies above the Nyquist which is half the sample rate frequency). The sharp filters at Nyquist are essential to ensure these “ghosts” do not appear in the reconstructed analog output, however, a sharp filter close to the audible range is less than ideal as it affects the audible range also!

Apart from this sharp near audio band filtering issue due to the low sample rate, CD Redbook is a near perfect audio distribution format - especially when carefully produced. Only recently has analog equipment achieved the equivalent of 21 bit resolution making 16 bits a further limitation of CD redbook.
@gdhal 

Thanks for this awesome gift.

I would like to hear Tower of Power live in 1975.

This was their best line up ever with Lenny Williams on vocals and Chester Thompson on keyboards. They are probably the best band in the world to see or hear live! Sooo excited!!
@audioengr  and @shadorne 

You're most welcome. Give me a day or so and I'll PM you the download links. Alternatively, you can send me an email at the address on my web page (probably not correct etiquette for me to list that here) so I can reply to you directly. 
They are probably the best band in the world to see or hear live!
Have you seen or heard the Grateful Dead :)
@gdhal

Never seen the Grateful dead but I watched a movie documentary and I love their live jams. Listen to them on Tidal a lot.

Tom Petty does a great live jam called Two Men Talkin’ that seems to be a tribute to Grateful Dead - do you know what is the original Grateful Dead jam this is based on?

https://youtu.be/HU9VBQBFQ_w