[amol]

allright i just did a lot of tests before posting this, it seems that resampling to 192 khz or 96 khz or any other really sucks, there is no bass in 192 khz mode, it sounds very thin. Default non resampled output rules..

 

[fewtch]

Congrats, you've found the output method that works best for you. Now just go with it...

 

[lan]

I don't like resampling either.

I'm still waiting for somebody to respond to my thread where I'd like to tweak some plugins such as this.

 

[fewtch]

I actually posted a thread on HydrogenAudio asking for a programmer to tweak the resampling plugin for WinAMP or Foobar (or just command line SSRC) so the user can change the software brickwall filtering at the cutoff frequency (or even eliminate it) as an experiment... very curious as to what effect that would have on the sound when upsampling. Unfortunately, no takers.

 

[Mr.Radar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fewtch I actually posted a thread on HydrogenAudio asking for a programmer to tweak the resampling plugin for WinAMP or Foobar (or just command line SSRC) so the user can change the software brickwall filtering at the cutoff frequency (or even eliminate it) as an experiment... very curious as to what effect that would have on the sound when upsampling. Unfortunately, no takers.

I'm not very good at programming and I don't know much about digital audio theory but I'll see if I could come up with a modded SSRC.

 

[lan]

Yes I would like to try tweaking but need to setup a developing environment first

 

[halcyon]

Lack of bass at 192kHz upsampling (from 44.1kHz) has been also cited by some high end cd player makers as a trade off when doing upsampling beyond 96kHz.

It's interesting that some PC users are also finding this out.

 

[Jasper994]

Personally, I go back and forth on this one... as a general rule I perfer the sound of upsampling, however, there are times when plain 44.1khz sounds better. It does also depend on the soundcard though, with the E-MU the number of times when 44.1khz sounds at least is good is much higher than with other cards I've used. With the Audiotrak Opto Play and M-Audio Audiophile USB it was pretty rare for me to perfer the unupsampled sound to the upsampled one.

Another thing to look at is whether or not to stay in multiples of the original sample. I was able to make up my mind between 88.2khz and 96khz. Sadly the E-MU made up my mind for me since it doesn't support 88.2 or 176.4... This is one of the few faults of the E-MU. The other being that it cannot pass a DD/DTS signal through its S/PDIF outputs.

 

[ooheadsoo]

Maybe it was an issue of system synergy, but in the long term, I had to throw out 88.2khz. It was unbearably etched and plastickey in the treble compared to 96khz.

 

[Orpheus]

88.2 is a direct multiple of 44.1. it's a better resampling frequency than 96 and will not result in artifacts.

 

[ooheadsoo]

Yeah, that's what I thought too, but that's not what I heard. Maybe the author of the resampler tool in foobar knows. 88.2 definitely sounds worse to my ears though. When I first decided to use 88.2, I thought that the extra treble was "clarity." However, when I compared to my cd player later, I felt it sounded like "plastic." Very bad to my ears, and not overly subtle either.

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ooheadsoo Yeah, that's what I thought too, but that's not what I heard. Maybe the author of the resampler tool in foobar knows. 88.2 definitely sounds worse to my ears though. When I first decided to use 88.2, I thought that the extra treble was "clarity." However, when I compared to my cd player later, I felt it sounded like "plastic." Very bad to my ears, and not overly subtle either.

Part of your issue might be your soundcard. M-Audio cards tend to be a bit bright in my experience. The smoothing nature of 96khz over 88.2khz might just work better for your ears considering the nature of the cards.

 

[Glassman]

resampling to multiples of input samplerate is always better quality wise, but someone can prefer the other way because of synergy with the concrete system.. hovever saying something like resampling sucks is like saying Wadia CD players sucks and by the way pretty much all digital gear today, because there is always at least 8x resampling used in digital filters prior to delta sigma modulators of all modern DAC chips.. the question is which digital filter is better, the one done in software or the one done in hardware of each concrete DAC chip.. the lesser DACs should profit from the software filter better than top of the line DACs with pretty good digital filters onboard..

and yes, we definately need better resampler! preferably heavily optimized for SSE and SSE2 instruction sets, the best one that's within the possibilities of todays common processors..

 

[ooheadsoo]

Just for the record, 44.1 doesn't have the super plasticky highs, only 88.2. However, it very well could be the sound card.

 

[fewtch]

I think it is the card... 88.2 KHz sounds ugly with my card as well (in fact I get clicks/pops which don't appear at any other sample rate), but 96 KHz is very smooth and clean sounding. I figure it must have something to do with the DAC... one would think that a 96 KHz DAC would actually do best at multiples of 48 KHz rather than 44.1 KHz.