24 bit 386khz oversampling.

[shooter]

It's hear and as i am vinyl enthusiast could be this rate be the beating of analog playback?

This Bit rate is not seamless (obviously) but it's the closest you can get and i've only seen this in 1 remarkable player?

If other manufacturers start oversampling at this rate could this be a 'good thing' for CD sales in the future or will the decline still happen?

Loads of questions, sorry!

 

[MattSPL]

Sounds promising, im a big fan of the cd myself.

 

[Anonymous]

The Cambridge Audio 840C has been upsampling to 24-bit 384kHz since 2006, followed by the CA 740C (2007) and the Harman Kardon HD990 (2008).

Having owned many CA units, I think the upsampling does work. It does not end all the issues with reproduction, but I like the output thus far.

However, what I'd like to see is a widely available and affordable HD Audio format (whether through the internet, or through physical media like BD-Audio). An upsampled digital stream still does not have the high frequency extension or accuracy of a true high resolution source.

I'd liken it to this analogy: Good upconverting DVD players could display nicer pictures than old DVD players, but the picture is still very short of a true HD source like Bluray. It's hard to enhance something when the data is not there to begin with.

 

[shooter]

Stagea:
The Cambridge Audio 840C has been upsampling to 24-bit 386kHz since 2006, followed by the CA 740C (2007) and the Harman Kardon HD990 (2008).

Today is the first day i've seen those figures, maybe i'm reading the wrong material!!!

I'd like to have a listen to those and make some comparisons to vinyl playback.

Right where's my nearest Cambridge and HK dealer...........

Just off topic, i was looking at the Cambridge Dacmagic earlier it has a good spec. Could be on the shopping list for sky radio via optical, any users?

 

[chebby]

Given that (in most cases) the material starts off as a 'red book' CD grade 16 bit 44.1khz signal, then isn't all this just 'polishing a curd'?

Oh by the by, the Naim DAC oversamples 44.1khz 16 times. (705khz)

Quote from their website...

"The Naim DAC's digital filtering is handled by a powerful SHARC DSP chip
running unique Naim authored code to create an ultra high precision
40bit floating point filter. The filter over-samples by 16 times on
44.1kHz data and provides stop-band attenuation of 180dB on all data."

In fact the USB on the Naim DAC (for memory sticks) supports WAV up to 32 bit and 768khz

 

[Anonymous]

chebby:

Given that (in most cases) the material starts off as a 'red book' CD grade 16 bit 44.1khz signal, then isn't all this just 'polishing a curd'?

Oh by the by, the Naim DAC oversamples 44.1khz 16 times. (705khz)

Quote from their website...

"The Naim DAC's digital filtering is handled by a powerful SHARC DSP chip running unique Naim authored code to create an ultra high precision 40bit floating point filter. The filter over-samples by 16 times on 44.1kHz data and provides stop-band attenuation of 180dB on all data."

In fact the USB on the Naim DAC (for memory sticks) supports WAV up to 32 bit and 768khz

Yup, the Naim DAC will handle 32-bit 768kHz audio through USB. Though I haven't seen distributed files in this resolution, I sure hope they start doing it. It's SPDIF inputs is limited by the spec to 24-bit 192kHz though.

If it matters, the Naim seems to only do oversampling (integer upsample) for lower resolution bitstreams (such as redbook CDs), and not input-asynchronous upsampling (though it reclocks, which should give some of the benefits). Upsampling to a fixed frequency supposedly ensures that all switching noise induced by the processors would be synchronous with the new sampling rate (therefore eliminating asynchronous switching noise, which may somewhat affect the analogue side of the DAC.) I'm sure it still sounds better than the Cambridge and Harman examples, as this is a higher end product (and the analogue side is probably better shielded or further from sources of contamination).

The Orpheus' Heritage Project Signature DAC seems to do fixed output upsampling to 768kHz. I wonder what sort of analogue filters they deploy on devices this good though (probably a very gentle slope, and of excellent quality).

Cheers!