Pretty much most DACs oversample already as part of their chain it’s to aid the filtering side of things i believe to remove nasties. The DAC in your NDX2 does jt. Some believe by sending the data already oversampled they are making less work for the DAC to do, less noise, better SQ. That’s the theory behind it anyway. I cant say I have noticed it being better when I experimented.
Just bear in mind oversampling and upscaling are not the same thing at all.
Yesi know I should have used the term upsampled for the second part that users do, but it’s early and not had my coffee.
After reading a bit more about resamplers and about PGGB (assuming it is not a bit mining scam!) I went back and did my original test again but using dbpoweramp resampler (SSRC) for upsampling on the fly. So now the same upsampler in all cases.
This definitely closed the gap between on the fly upsampling and reading straight off the disk. Off the disk directly was still a little better (strings vibrating on a doubIe bass was clearer for example).
I then also upsampled to 176.4/24 (4 x 44.1) and compared to 192/24. Still had a sneaking preference for the 192/24 but can’t put a finger on why, the difference is very slight. 192/24 is the max supported on NDS and also on ND555.
All of course using my own ears and totally unverified/unverifiable.
44 1 doesn’t go into 192 well you best using mulitpliers of the same sample rate so 44.1 goes to 88.2 or 176.4 etc, 48 based sample rates go 96, 192 etc
That’s what I thought, hence me trying the upsampling to 176.2 and comparing. Certainly should be better for on the fly upsampling. Just couldn’t really pin down a difference when listening to them.
Suggests that there may be a trade off of the sampling rate being optimal for the DAC in the NDS vs the resampling supposed advantage or reducing jitter maybe?
If I were to upsample my whole library it would make sense to keep to a straight multiple so easier to reverse or change in the future. I would keep a backup anyway of the original files.
I am surprised nobody has mentioned HQplayer, which many people use in place of an Mscaler. When the TT2/Mscaler thread was going strong, it was talked about quite a bit by Toonartist. He is no longer an active poster here that I am aware of however. It is basically used for on the fly upscaling, rather than offline like PGGB.
My IFI Zen stream is an NAA which supports HQPlayer, so may try it in the future, but my current Dac is not ideal for this.
Also, I am not much of a computer whiz, so it may be more frustrating than anything to me.
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