Upsampling disadvantges, mutliplying the mistakes??

Well I did not go quite that far,by saying it is crap,but PCM is a flawed technology,and by upsampling you are also taking the errors,and the good and upsampling.Other than some very expensive upsampling DACs(Purcell and one there brand I cannot remember)upsampling is more of a manufacturers hype.Of course you will find those who dissagree and swear it sounds better.Yet I see so many inexpensive pieces(upsampling DACS) on sale on this site,I really have to wonder whether other people have found it really isn't all it is cracked up to be.Let your ears be the judge.

Upsampling is the same as oversampling which has been used by even inexpensive CD players since the early 1980s (see previous threads on upsampling). 8X oversampling being the most common. High quality, good sounding CD players have more to do with the IMPLEMENTATION of high quality digital to analog conversion, power supplies, and the analog out sections rather than with oversampling per se.

Madrigal Audio's DACS and CD players, for example, oversample at the 8X rate, or a sampling rate of 352.8 KHZ, but they sound excellent because ALL aspects of the DA conversion process are addressed in a quality way, eg jitter control. I use their 360S DAC and it is excellent sounding. I have no connection with Madrigal Audio except as a satisfied customer. Cheers. Craig

According to a book on high end audio I was reading last night, the problem with CD audio is the digital filtering that is applied to the signal to remove errors. When the digital signal is upsampled, less filtering is required at the higher sample rate causing less degradation of the original recording. The main issue with 16/44 normal CD was identified as the more aggressive digital filtering. The author went on to say that he has witness demos of a master 192 tape vs 16/44 vs 96 and 192 upsamples and he was socked at how close the upsamples came. He said that the regular cd was no comparison to the master or the upsamples.

PCM is flawed? What does that mean? Sounds like the Bull Crap from the SACD people. PCM is a digital technique that is widely used in lots of digital audio and video applications. Upsampling is just another marketing gimmick also. There's just so much BS from all the digital players, just like al lthe different processes to do A/D conversion. None of the processes are basically better than the others. The limiting factors are still the hardware itself which introduces errors. The only real advancement in CD playback is HDCD which actually has additional data to improve sound.

I agree w/the group. Please audition several player w/different dac's. I prefer burr-brown dac's over pcm or Sigma/Delta devices. (burr-brown - resolution audio, Old Theta, adcom,wadia, etc..)

Take alook at :
http://www.onhifi.com/features/20010301.htm

Your thoughts are pretty much right on as far as multipling the mistakes.If you increase word lenght through conventional techniks you increase proportionaly the jitter.The only player and dac that do not do this is the Audiomeca units due to downloading the bitstream into a dsp chip which rebuilds the stream to a higher bit ,32, then loads this into the dac to be read at 192.This system eliminates jitter and definitly sounds better than 16 bit players.