Upsampling - Pre or real time

[smcpoland]

Hi Guys,

while reading the following article (link here) I was intrigued by the following:

...Absolute Sound's series of articles on computer audio. They address the issue of "pre-upsampling" vs "real-time upsampling" of audio data. It was clear from their report and confirmed by my own listening tests that pre-upsampling 44.1/16 CD quality files, regardless of the original format, resulted in an overall improvement in the sound compared with real-time upsampling

the upsampling they are talking about is from 44/16 to 88.2/24 or 176.4/24 (amongst others).

While I know my LINN DS does realtime, is there a real benefit to doing pre-upsampling? Can this be put to the test with dbpoweramp? I know I can get the 24 bits. But can I get the 88.2 or 176.4?

I understand izotope is one of the best software-upsamplers has anyone tried it? Is there a case to ask if dbpoweramp could licence izotope for upsampling applications? Would it work? Would it be of benefit.

Many thanks and regards

Sean

[Spoon]

Re: Upsampling - Pre or real time

http://src.infinitewave.ca/

Switch on SSRC High Precision, and Isotope, they are practically identical..

Personally I would always let the player do upsampling on playback.

[smcpoland]

Re: Upsampling - Pre or real time

Thanks for the link, very interesting, however the graphs are for down-sampling (from 96K-44.1) and not up-sampling from 44.1 - 88.2 (or 96)...I checked the FAQ's, Help etc. but couldn't find anything about upsampling. Maybe I'm missing something?

As you put it, Personally, I would in most cases (today) allow the system to upsample. However, personally, I would like to have the option to try pre-upsampling as well.

Having spoken with a couple of dealers in the past 24 hours they also believe pre-upsampling "can" work. It's something I would like to try, and as dbPA is my favorite (and only) ripper it seems the right place to start.

Maybe this is something that could be built into Multi-Encoding...for example

FLAC red book
FLAC 44.1/24
FLAC 88.2/24
FLAC 176.4/24

all output to different libraries (folders) whereby the listener can then make a determination on which sounds better...storage is so cheap today.

Should I just add this feature request to the Wishlist and see what happens?

Maybe some of the other viewers on the site could give some thought as well.

Thanks and regards