[tmt1611]

i recently bought a Sennheiser HD6xx, i've owned a Centrance Dacport 24/96khz Dac amp before.
when i played a 24bit/192khz audio file on my desktop using fb2k i hear noise everywhere. When i played the same song with lower sample rate ( 16/44,1khz) it's perfect.
So what is the problem here? Do i need to upgrade any of my equips?

 

[bigshot]

Not all audio components are prepared to deal with ultra high frequencies. It can cause distortion in the audible range. You can find out info on this in the article in my sig, CD Sound Is All You Need. Happily, you don't need to replace any equipment if it can play it perfectly at the lower sampling rate.

 

[castleofargh]

i recently bought a Sennheiser HD6xx, i've owned a Centrance Dacport 24/96khz Dac amp before.
when i played a 24bit/192khz audio file on my desktop using fb2k i hear noise everywhere. When i played the same song with lower sample rate ( 16/44,1khz) it's perfect.
So what is the problem here? Do i need to upgrade any of my equips?

so you try to play 192kHz with a device that will take at most 96. one obvious remark is that it's not going to happen. now what is really happening is more mysterious. depending on the driver used and your player and maybe windows setting(I'm guessing you're on Windows), the result could be nothing, some errors, or resampling done by somebody. what you want here is to decide who's doing the resampling so that you know it's going to be done more or less properly.
windows mixer can do that but audiophiles usually don't like that solution and consider it subpar. you can add a SOX resampler to foobar as you're already using that. most people seem to find SOX pretty good. you can even pick the component that only resamples a given sample rate, so you might use that if you like to only resample 192khz files to 96khz.
beyond that comes the mater of how you output the signal from foobar. if the driver has something like an ASIO output (or WASAPI), then the DAC should get what you set foobar to output. but if you're going through Direct Sound(DS) and windows' default mixer, then windows might resample again to whatever setting you have in windows for you Centrance DAC. so in that later situation, you'd want windows to be set to the same sample rate you're using in foobar(so that windows leaves the signal alone).

if it seems complicated, it's only because I explained several situations. you only have to deal with one and that shouldn't take too much of your time.

 

[tmt1611]

so you try to play 192kHz with a device that will take at most 96. one obvious remark is that it's not going to happen. now what is really happening is more mysterious. depending on the driver used and your player and maybe windows setting(I'm guessing you're on Windows), the result could be nothing, some errors, or resampling done by somebody. what you want here is to decide who's doing the resampling so that you know it's going to be done more or less properly.
windows mixer can do that but audiophiles usually don't like that solution and consider it subpar. you can add a SOX resampler to foobar as you're already using that. most people seem to find SOX pretty good. you can even pick the component that only resamples a given sample rate, so you might use that if you like to only resample 192khz files to 96khz.
beyond that comes the mater of how you output the signal from foobar. if the driver has something like an ASIO output (or WASAPI), then the DAC should get what you set foobar to output. but if you're going through Direct Sound(DS) and windows' default mixer, then windows might resample again to whatever setting you have in windows for you Centrance DAC. so in that later situation, you'd want windows to be set to the same sample rate you're using in foobar(so that windows leaves the signal alone).

if it seems complicated, it's only because I explained several situations. you only have to deal with one and that shouldn't take too much of your time.

tks for your very detailed reply. I've made some change in my foobar, Im now using wasapi (event mode) for output and SOX to resample my 192khz to 96hz. But i stiil hear noise. Do you think the problem may gone with the audio file? (the audio i played was rip from the vinyl disc).

 

[castleofargh]

oh sorry, I assumed that you had confirmed that "noise" on several hires albums and confirmed that the specific sample rate was the cause of noise. if it's one specific file where you can notice something, then it's more likely that the file itself has those noises. I probably made you focus on a lot of irrelevant stuff ^_^.

 

[71 dB]

(the audio i played was rip from the vinyl disc).

Vinyl is technically an inferior sound format these days offering 60 dB of dynamic range at best, roughly half of what CD can offer so some noise is totally normal.

 

[tmt1611]

oh sorry, I assumed that you had confirmed that "noise" on several hires albums and confirmed that the specific sample rate was the cause of noise. if it's one specific file where you can notice something, then it's more likely that the file itself has those noises. I probably made you focus on a lot of irrelevant stuff ^_^.

its okay. i've figured out something tks for that =))