Upsampling, Can there be too much?


I've owned the Chord Mscaler for a year and loved it, but recently added two new components that have built in upsampling: The Aurender W20SE, and the Jay's Audio CDT3-MK3. I find the Mscaler works well with the Aurender's built in upsampling, but not the Jay's.

 

Conclusion: not upsampling the Jay's, and standard redbook 16-bit 44Khz to the Mscaler gives incredible 24-bit 705Khz to the Hugo TT2 DAC for finest sound.

 

With multiple upsamplers in a chain has anyone gotten static, popping, smearing, or any kind of distortion from too much upsampling?

128x128brandonhifi

All DACs in one way or another "shape" their small signals... And some offer "pure" hardware as well as some choice of "filtering"... And then again some DACs offer you both NOS and some other options like upsample rates and filtering... Take the Denafrips Pontus II for example, very popular... Just one of many... As in hardware so also in software...

And where do you draw the line with so called "pro studio" vs consumer software... Seems like a price-point vs knowledge/experience thing...

More power to those that can hear a difference but in my situation with the Cary DMS -500 player. (The DMS-500 series and up- offers users the option of converting PCM sources into a DSD64, DSD128, or even DSD258) I have yet to really hear any noticeable difference among any of my stored files nor amongst the differing formatted content streamed (TIDAL, QOBUZ) when engaging this unique use  “ on the fly” 128 Trubit DSP feature. As much as I WISH heard it , EVERY format sounds pretty good!

To answer your question directly, on the most analytical equipment, 192/24 is exceptionally hard to beat.  So when I am recording LPs, I stop there. 

I have two albums however that run right over 96K without stopping, so obviously the above is not adequate for them. However the tangible perceptive difference is negligible.