A.wayne
Active Member
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2016
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Almost all DACs upsample. Those that don't introduce aliasing artifacts.
We are here , not there , hence my question .... What are the sonic trade offs ..
Almost all DACs upsample. Those that don't introduce aliasing artifacts.
We are here , not there , hence my question .... What are the sonic trade offs ..
I don't think Wayne is playing with you. He is asking a question. Let me answer a bit because I think you spoke past each other.I know it is really fun to play obtuse on the internet, but life is too short.
Ah, forgot the main point. That oversampling in the DAC silicon is a different process than upsampling in software. When discussing, we should keep these separate for clarity even though the core signal processing operation is similar.
Hell broke loose as it should . Upsampling to DSD is a waste of time. It leads me to believe that the human ear likes listening to some distortion once in a while.Ok, here is some more measurements before I rush to ship the unit back.
First, the question of USB input vs S/PDIF. Please note that my USB test file may be different because it is produced differently. Still, as you see, there is really no difference in using USB and S/PDIF when it comes to low level accuracy: (all graphs are for balanced XLR output rather than RCA posted before for completeness):
View attachment 9459
The pair of graphs by the way, are for left and right channels.
I then turned on upsampling to 8X, still using USB input. This is what I got:
View attachment 9460
Now I am showing one channel only. Again, seems to make no difference.
Now look at what happens when I upsample to DSD:
View attachment 9461
Hell broke loose! Low level accuracy has degraded substantially (in red). Hard to see it as a sine wave anymore. In addition, the waveform is shifted down which indicates negative DC offset (constant negative voltage).
Also, the levels are higher which in a listening test without control, may make people like DSD better even though objectively the waveform is degraded fair bit.
No time for further investigation. Have to see if my Exasound has DSD upsampling and does the same thing. Food for thought!
So I bought this NT-503 - mainly for the connectivity options that would allow my sons to plug in their laptops and bluetooth in their phones when they visit. I recently bought a 10mHz clock for this and I cannot believe the difference the external clock makes in the sound. Complete wall to wall sound, velvety, totally holographic. I don't understand why they wouldn't have built this technology in. It isn't that hard to get a low phase jitter 10mHz clock I would think. But for those of you with this unit - it is a different beast with the external clock. Holy moly.