Oversampling vs. Upsampling

Germanboxers
As I wrote, the links are proposals among others for attempting to give simple definition to both "technologies" : OVER- & UP- sampling.

Simaudio staff, for instance, has also another point of view : http://www.simaudio.com/pdf/Upsampling.pdf

Interpolating the sample data is a trick or tool among others, to get back to analog domain, as you mentioned.
But it's also a mistake to underrate digital signal processing, these involved technics aren't specific to our hobby : listening to music ...

I do own a dCS972/954 combo, and it works great, amha.
I've also listened for two weeks to a non-over/up sampling product : the Zanden DAC.
And, well, in a perfect world, I would like to be able to afford to buy one ;-)

The ARC CD3 is also a great sounding machine !

Happy listening, Emile

Thanks for the input. I finished reading this article recently at International Audio/Video Review (http://www.iar-80.com/page25.html) and was wondering how accurate his information is? It was written in a little less technical language that allowed me to understand CDP better (although not entirely on the first read). My background in digital electronics helped me somewhat.

Emile, thank you for the link to the dcs sales tutorial...I think this document proves the point regarding marketing hype. I particularly like the end of the summary.

Everybody else is still in the dark ages, using Fourier Transforms in a feeble attempt to understand digital. dCS uses wavelets." Smile smugly (as if you knew what you were talking about), and get back to the demonstration as quickly as possible! :-)

The key phrase is "get back to the demonstration as quickly as possible". This article was NOT intended to illuminate the subject (any of it). It is simply a marketing guideline to help salespeople to baffle the customer with bs.

Here are some proposals of definition :
http://www.audiophilesystems.com/dcs/dacsandupsamplers.htm

and
http://www.aslgroup.com/dcs/upandover.htm

Tastes great.

Less filling.

Marco

I disagree. I believe non-upsampling machine sounds the most natural. The limitless note decay found in a non up and over sampling DAC is indicative of it's resolution powers.

Gy4, as I'm sure you've figured out, upsampling and oversampling are the exact same thing. Upsampling is simply a marketing term and 96kHz and 192kHz "upsampling" were used specifically to imply that regular 16bit/44.1kHz CD's could achieve some of the magic of DVD-A high rez formats. The timing for this marketing hype was perfect as most high-end consumers were sitting on the sidelines waiting for the high rez players to come out and format wars to settle. Interest in the latest $4k+ CD player was low as many wondered if an inexpensive DVD-A or SuperAudio CD player would better the multi-kilobuck CD players. It worked perfectly and CD player sales (with "upsampling" hype in particular) took off.

Oversampling to 96kHz or 192kHz results in a decrease in precision due to rounding errors when oversampling by a non-integer multiple; however, I’m not sure this is truly significant to the quality of the sound. Usually, these products will then use another digital filter to oversample to some higher rate such as 384kHz (4x96). The truth is there are great sounding products that do this and also great sounding products that simply use a cascade of integer multiple oversampling digital filters, or even a single integer oversampling digital filter too (eg 8x44.1 = 352.8kHz or 16x44.1 = 705.6kHz).

I do think that technology has improved over the last 5 years with better off-the-shelf digital filters and DACS. Also, knowledge of implementation techniques has grown significantly (witness the growth in modders who tweak existing designs to squeeze out better performance). In the end, the quality of the sound is a function of the quality of parts and implementation (eg transport, clock, digital filters, DACS, reconstruction filters, analog stage, etc) and not the marketing hype. You’re doing the right thing in trying to cut through the marketing bs, but ultimately, let your ears decide.

I read the article you posted on the Sylum, and I believe that Teac/Esoteric does something similar. For instance, the highest sampling freq. on the DV-50S is a multiple of 44.1 like the Sim products, 32x in this case. Don't know that much though as I just heard the Esoteric unit at a local shop for an extremely enjoyable few minutes.

IMHO the right upsampler gets you closest to analog. The AH! Njoe Tjoeb 4000 with all upgrades is great.