Upsampling the way to go? ?

Tony

I directly A/B'd my upsampling 24/192 EVS Millenium II to an ARC DAC3 and CD2 and felt that the Millenium showed much more detail, low level resolution and presence.

Haven't heard the CD3, but my results were amazing compared to those two ARC products, which sounded flat compared to the EVS (and I own ARC amp and pre)

Tom

The only comparison I've seen between an upsampling CD player and the CD3 is the one below from audioreview.com comparing it to the Electrocompaniet EMC1(24/192 version)--for what it's worth. I know the Electrocompaniet EMC1 is highly thought of and the fact that the CD3 stays with it in this comparison is a good indication that it will hang with well-executed upsampling players, but in this case it seems the CD3's higher price was not justified for this person given the two units similar level of performance. Anyway, here it is:

"My unit is the 24/192 version and all I can say is the EMC-1 has everything that I am looking for; smooth, transparent, deep & wide sounstage, and very, very analogue! I compare this unit to Audio Research's latest CD3 side by side and my conclusion is I like the performance of both units, but not the price. CD3 is double the price of EMC-1 (and very ugly, too)...so I end up with the EMC-1.
BTW, please use the XLR outputs to achieve a better sonic performance than the unbalance outputs. I could not believe my ears when I switched to the balanced output."

Soix posted a link to the papers written by Perpetual Technologies on upsampling vs interpolation. The papers describe their "P-1A Digital Correction Engine" which was plagued with problems from the start that were never resolved after repeated promises by the manufacturer.

If you do an internet search on google.com for Perpetual Technologies, you'll find a handful of product reviews and in more than one review from different magazines, you'll read about how the reviewers P-1A didn't work quite right. A search on Audio Asylum will also reveal several owner complaints about the Perpetual P-1A. Not only was this product plagued with problems from the beginning, the company failed to deliver on promised updates and software revisions.

Their white papers may sound good in theory but the P-1A which they write about, failed miserably in reality. Is the company still in business?

I have also heard there have been some issues with the Perpetual Technologies P1A, and I don't know if it is an ongoing problem or if PT has fixed the problems. In any event, I posted the link purely for informational purposes and not to endorse any particular product--just to be clear. Although PT's implementation of the technology may leave something to be desired(although a friend of mine was quite happy with his P1A and there have been some very favorable reviews of the product as well), the general overview still provides useful insights into the basic components of the upsampling process(i.e. not specific to Perpetual Technologies), which is what I thought would be interesting given the many questions and misconceptions on upsampling that seem to repeatedly appear here.

Tim

Tom: I find your results comparing the Mill II to the DAC 3 pretty interesting. Like you, i was also interested in that piece. I found the Mill II to sound much more "organic" i.e. more musical, natural and fuller sounding. In comparison, the DAC 3 sounded somewhat "bleached", lacking detail and lacked the warmth, body and bottom end extension that the Mill II is capable of. I'm sure that i could've gotten better results with the ARC if i really tinkered with it, but i didn't feel the need. Sean
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