What sample rate?

[Gazjam]

There's no benefit from running more than 44.1kHz sample rate.

Only the Sith deal in absolutes...

[Macca]

Only the Sith deal in absolutes...

Who says I'm not a Sith?

I don't get your thing about bit depth. All bit depth does is determine the maximum dynamic range possible. 16 bits gives more dynamic range than you need for 99.99% of recordings and even then it is probably higher than the amplifier is capable of anyway - what is the weakest link with regard to dynamic range in any system? It isn't going to be the digital source even if it is a supermarket brand DVD player.

All very well to talk about the effects of aliasing, bit depth, pre and post ringing, jitter etc, but can you hear them when music is playing? And the answer is no. If these things were audible vinyl would sound terrible since its sins are of far worse magnitude in these respects.

[Edward]

Archimago did an interesting experiment to demonstrate that even with high jitter and drift values you can't hear the differences. He created versions of a track that had jitter and drift values far in excess of even poorly designed DACs.

This is his write up and the relevant tracks can be obtained here.

Anyway I certainly can't hear any differences - even after several plays. I was keen to hear differences so as to confirm my positive bias I have towards my set up. It is not to be.

[struth]

All depends if you suffer from Al Gore isms

[Edward]

The important bit (in my opinion...having dabbled with digital a bit) is the important part is the bit depth, not the sample rate.
A 24bit 44Khz version of a song has always sounded noticeably better than even a 352Khz 16 bit up-sample of the same track.

Bit depth is what matters...

Definitely bit depth matters. However if you upsampled a 16 bit track to 352Khz (or whatever frequency) whilst staying with 16 bit wordlength the resultant track will sound worse due to rounding. Any digital manipulation needs to be done at a high enough bit depth (typically DSP these days do things at 64 bit floating) and then dithered down to the end result (16, 24 etc). Your 24 bit 44.1khz track will sound better then the 16 bit upsampled track.

Or did I misunderstand your post?

Of course the upsampling engine you used may be at fault.

[struth]

been using dsd in main system as audirvana does it and pc over there has enough memory etc so there is no problems

[dave2010]

Definitely bit depth matters. However if you upsampled a 16 bit track to 352Khz (or whatever frequency) whilst staying with 16 bit wordlength the resultant track will sound worse due to rounding. Any digital manipulation needs to be done at a high enough bit depth (typically DSP these days do things at 64 bit floating) and then dithered down to the end result (16, 24 etc). Your 24 bit 44.1khz track will sound better then the 16 bit upsampled track.

I think your comments are theoretically correct - but some people might find that practically they're not - for them at least. I can't actually comment sufficiently well on audio, but I have done work with video and image files. Much of the theory is the same, but sometimes it is definitely possible to get a much better visual effect with some digital processing, and perhaps also upsampling. Compared with the original images the modified ones must have been less good, because of the processing, but most people would prefer the edited ones.

There are limits to what can be achieved, however, sometimes the improvements are only slight if there's insufficient detail in the originals.

[Sherwood]

I think your comments are theoretically correct - but some people might find that practically they're not - for them at least. I can't actually comment sufficiently well on audio, but I have done work with video and image files. Much of the theory is the same, but sometimes it is definitely possible to get a much better visual effect with some digital processing, and perhaps also upsampling. Compared with the original images the modified ones must have been less good, because of the processing, but most people would prefer the edited ones.

There are limits to what can be achieved, however, sometimes the improvements are only slight if there's insufficient detail in the originals.

That's the key point. When the vinyl record was developed I am sure that few people could imagine how much information could be recorded in the grooves. At the time, the technology to retrieve the Nth degree of detail from a groove was not fully developed. Over the years, there has been a progressive improvement in technology and engineering so that albums recorded and pressed 50 years ago (or longer) can sound fantastic. Yes, there were very good reproduction systems around by the 60's, but they were the exception rather than the norm. I believe the same applies to digital. When the CD was launched I contend that the same was true: that there was an imbalance in the audio chain and that encoding analogue to digital was more successful than the reverse process. I could barely listen to cd when it was first launched. I was particularly sensitive to the high frequency playback and what I now perceive to be "time smearing". Again, there were a few decent cd players around, but most were way out of my budget. Over time, these problems seem to have been addressed and I am now happy to have all but switched over to digital. However, it has taken a long time to make good quality digital reproduction truly affordable and for me the biggest improvement has come with the better processing of digital to analogue through upsampling.

[Gazjam]

Definitely bit depth matters. However if you upsampled a 16 bit track to 352Khz (or whatever frequency) whilst staying with 16 bit wordlength the resultant track will sound worse due to rounding. Any digital manipulation needs to be done at a high enough bit depth (typically DSP these days do things at 64 bit floating) and then dithered down to the end result (16, 24 etc). Your 24 bit 44.1khz track will sound better then the 16 bit upsampled track.

Or did I misunderstand your post?

Of course the upsampling engine you used may be at fault.

You just agreed with me without realising it.
Cool.

[Edward]

I think your comments are theoretically correct - but some people might find that practically they're not - for them at least. I can't actually comment sufficiently well on audio, but I have done work with video and image files. Much of the theory is the same, but sometimes it is definitely possible to get a much better visual effect with some digital processing, and perhaps also upsampling. Compared with the original images the modified ones must have been less good, because of the processing, but most people would prefer the edited ones.

There are limits to what can be achieved, however, sometimes the improvements are only slight if there's insufficient detail in the originals.

Hi Dave, I agree about your main point about possible improvements via upsampling (I to do image processing) but my narrow point was about doing upsampling (or indeed any processing) whilst staying in the 16 bit domain.