upsampling and oversampling

[jazzdude]

Question: What is the difference between upsampling and oversampling? I' m investigating possibly upgrading my Ultech (Ultimate Technology) CD player by adding on a Bel Canto upsampler or Musical Fidelity TriVista DAC oversampler. Any opinions on these two products. The MF is a new product with the "innards" taken from their TriVista CD player.

Is the sound quality really a significant upgrade (more detail, but not fatiguing, more soundstage) with either/both? I'm quite happy with my CD player. It has HDCD but I am willing to consider an outboard DAC if the sound is allot more improved.

[Tenorman]

From the UK magazine Hi-Fi Choice

Oversampling involves multiplying the sampling frequency by a whole number, usually between 4 and 32, but sometimes higher, and is designed to let the DAC work in a more linear fashion.

Upsampling is where the datastream is stretched out by interpolation and is typically used to refer to large changes in sampling rate such as from 44.1khz to 192khz.

Bet you are glad you asked:eek2: And before you ask, I don't understand it.

Re the DAC in theory yes, but there is such a pile of ifs involved that the only way to do it is to listen. See if you can get a friendly Hi-Fi dealer to put your existing player in a set-up and attach a choice of DACs. BTW you need a digital out from your deck in order to attach the DAC.
Depending on the age of your current deck you might be better spending the money on a new one. Price for price there has been an audible improvement in the quality over the last 5 or so years

PS the DAC in every CD player oversamples. I do not know your current deck but currently use an MF A3.2 CD deck and MF 3.1 Dual Mono Integrated amp and cannot fault them

[jazzdude]

Thanks, Tenorman.
Yeah, I guess I'll have to go to a dealer and get him to let me take home the DACs I'm interested in to see how they sound. Which is what I did before I decided to purchase my CD player. My player is about five years old and very nice sounding when matched with my system. Each of these DACs cost over 1k and for that price I want to be sure I know what I'm getting.

[Hackensack]

Yes, a complex question. If I had a CD player 5 years old, I would also consider buying a new player that included these features for not a lot more $$, such as the Music Hall Maverick for $1,500 (I think), which also happens to play SACDs.

That said, I have a standard, nice consumer-brand CD player, but when its digital output is run through the Perpetual Technologies P-3A DAC, the difference is like night and day. And it's easy to demonstrate--I have the analog out of the CD player as one pre-amp input and the analog out of the DAC as the next, and can flip back and forth. Such simple and direct a/b demonstrations are not always easy to come by. The difference is not subtle. The sound becomes substantially more 3-dimensional, among other things.

FWIW, the PT DAC sells for $800. I got mine on eBay for half that, a major bargain. I was lloking at a used Bel Canto 2 when I found that, and, no, I haven't compared them side by side. PT:
http://www.av123.com/products_category_brand.php?section=processors&brand=2