Basic technical question about digital source signals


Forgive if this is a stupid question, but the current thread about digital vs analog made me curious: if you look at an analog music signal you see (I think) summations of sine waves i.e. a signal waveform which is "smooth". I realize that there are many contributions to digital sound, but starting with the most basic, if you look at the output from a digital source e.g. on an oscilloscope, would it appear "smooth" i.e. has all the stairstepping that occurs when you convert digital to analog been smoothed out or would the signal appear jagged to some extent?

Thanks for your time.
berner99

Showing 1 response by berner99

itsjustme
When you over or up sample a signal the goal is not to magically create missing information from a vacuum. Its simply to move the noise ("steps") to a higher frequency so that they are more easily filtered out. Get i hgih enough and your ear will do it on its own.
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Given the number of people who prefer nonoversampled DACs something seems wrong/incomplete with this theory