DAC: Rossini vs Vivaldi

dCS Products
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Upsampling vs. Oversampling according to dCS, circa 2008;

Upsampling

An Upsampler is a digital-to-digital converter (DDC) capable of converting digital audio data at one sample rate to a higher sample rate. The term “Upsampler” was first used by dCS in 1998 during development of the dCS Purcell. Some other manufacturers appear to have confused the term “upsampling” with “oversampling”, which is a similar process used in good audio DACs for many years. They have missed the point that upsampling is an intermediate step intended to provide enhanced data to drive an oversampling DAC.

Some positive observations that help to characterise the effects of upsampling in a dCS system:

  1. Upsampling to progressively higher sample rates makes progressive improvements to fine detail, sound stage depth and image separation. So, the sound quality increases as you upsample CD data first to 24/88.2, then 24/176.4, then 24/352.8 kS/s.
  2. Converting 16/44.1 to 24/44.1 kS/s makes a worthwhile improvement to the fine detail, so the resolution is important also.
  3. If data with a higher information capacity is presented to the Ring DAC, sonic improvements are reported.

One present view is that upsampling works by breaking the DAC’s oversampling function down into 2 steps, presenting the DAC with finer, smoother data, making the DAC’s job much easier and more accurate.

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