I was reading the descriptions for the Avarice and the discontinued Vanity module and was curious about this:
"Oversampling‘s purpose is to dramatically simplify the design of the analogue post-DAC filter by performing the hard work in the digital domain instead of analogue domain. Not many people are aware that 8x oversampling filters are integrated within nearly every DAC in existence and that these converters do not in fact operate at 44.1kHz when replaying CD, but at a much higher „Oversampled“ rate. So why do we need extra upsampling when we already have oversampling already integrated within our DAC? The reason is simply a question of quality. Unfortunately, the performance of common oversampling filters range from mediocre to poor. We found this to be one of the main factors for the commonly perceived 'digital' sound - lack of sound stage and depth, with an unnatural “busy“ feel.
The 2x Upsampling performed by our Zero Alias Filter practically substitute the first stage of DAC's own oversampling filter – from an audio quality perspective, the most influential one. We've experienced a dramatic improvement in overall sound quality on various DAC’s featuring currently the best oversampling filters available. In fact we shouldn't even be surprised considering what we know about those filters, nonetheless the difference our Zero Alias Filters made impressed us."
The current VanityHD output opts for native resolution rather than the 2x upsampling option in the original Vanity and the 4x option in the Avarice. Is it felt that the benefits of a "bit-perfect" signal at native resolution outweigh the benefits of by-passing the DAC's 1st filter stage via upsampling? Does the answer depend upon how the signal is processed/filtered within the DAC? Thanks.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2016 02:49AM by Mjay71.