…unless, of course you want to upsample to 384 or DSDx2 ( or 768, DSDx4 and so ad infinitum 
).
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Can you please elaborate on your choice to not upsample Pete?
I have posted several times about this in the past but briefly I am sensitive ( unusually so it seems) to spatial aberrations that upsampling can introduce. I suspect that this would not be of significance or even noticeable for most listeners as it manifests itself particularity with classical music recordings which , unlike other genres, are based around a recording of a real space within which a performance is taking place and where the approximate position of the performers, if not exactly known, is at least understood from experience of live concerts.
Thank you for taking the time to reply.
Joachim, in my experience, configuring the Upsampler to full DXD (locked) as suggested by Pete, and DSD as passthrough, yields the best sound quality in a full Vivaldi stack. Personally I found no sonic benefit to fractional rates below DXD for PCM sources.
Andrew from dCS posted this a while ago:
It appears there are two groups of listeners in this regard. I like the way he frames the sensitivity as a burden.
Filters and mapping are a completely different issue from the upsampling rates discussion.
Agreed… @Anupc Anup. However, I want to be insistent:
@Andrew does mention upsampling settings 
I sometimes hear differences between the upsamling rates settings. Most often they are subtle. Sometimes I can identify them easily. I rely on my auditory intuition or gut feeling, which is smarter than my thinking mind in this regard.
To each his own of course (by the way, I can recommend a good Pinot Nior which will likely yield even better sound quality results if drunk 20min before your listening session 
).
Objectively speaking though, in my view the Vivaldi Upsampler has more than enough horsepower to upsample redbook to DXD without detriment, yielding better sonic results than just a fractional rate below that, all else being equal of course; filter, mapping etc.
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Should I try to buy a “Pinot Nior”, the shopkeeper would go “
”.
So should the DAC, no? See where I’m coming from?
No I don’t actually, please elaborate.
Hey @Anupc Anup,
OK, let’s elaborate 
You choose an aspect of the upsampler technology to make a point - the processing power of the hardware built in. There is at least one assumption in the background - namely that higher output bit rate must equal better result. And as the hardware is capable, highest bit rate equals best. The omitted component in this logic is the listener. I return to that soon.
First I’m coming back to my question above. The DAC itself oversamples with enough processing power. If we would reduce the affair to the property of processing power a separate upsampler would be inaudible. dCS stated something to that end here:
I have seen your post below and am not versed enough in the details of digital audio processing. So I can’t argue at a granular level. My general point holds though - at least I believe… 
A hifi system is complicated. It can be deconstructed in and understood through its constituent parts. That’s what we engineers have learned and are practicing. The human body and mind both are complex systems. They work differently. Here the dynamics between the system constituents are important. Prediction is hard. There are unknown knowns. When you add a human listener to a hifi system the resulting system becomes complex. To deal with complex systems it is useful to employ these tactics, wich we actually implicitly follow here in the community:
- building relationships + working with patterns of interaction
- sense making by collective interpretation
- working in communities of practice
- act, learn and plan at the same time
- building on what works
Here’s an article approaching the system classification from a different angle. For the ones who enjoy gymnastics in logic:
https://betterprogramming.pub/simple-vs-complicated-vs-complex-vs-chaos-737b5964849d
My resulting hypothesis is, that reductionistic arguments are not sufficient to deal with hifi. The complex nature of the hifi + listener system requires the approach of collective sense making we practice here in the community. And to be useful that must include the ‘messy’ part - the listener.
Naturally, as there’s not much point in debating a subjective opinion 
Objectively though, the higher the upsample rate the better the transient response for any given reconstruction filter. Integer upsample rates of 88.2k and above all have the same set of filters available on the Vivaldi stack, so, assuming there are no other detrimental effects with increased rates such as increased jitter (see footnote 1), it tends to reason that we should let the Upsampler do its job to its fullest extent possible.
Unfortunately, there’re no objective data published that I could find which shows whether or not the Vivaldi stack measurably performs better when a redbook track is upsampled to 352.8k (DXD) versus, say, to just 88.2k or 176.4k.
So, we’ll just have to leave it at that 
Footnote 1:
The only objective measures I’ve seen online of a dCS Upsampler is Stereophile’s review of the dCS Purcell in 2001 - the only focus for measurement was whether there was increased jitter with increased upsampling rates - there wasn’t.
There was a more recent Chord Hugo M Scaler review (Chord’s Upsampler) in 2020 where Stereophile was able to show not just a transient response difference, but also a clear frequency response and noise floor improvements from Upsampling.
Both are worth a read if you’re keen on exploring the more objective side of things 
We are talking about more than mere opinion. Listeners can be observed, asked, surveyed, classified - they can be and are subjects of empirical research. Theories can be formed and validated or rejected. All objective things… When we read various dCS posts, they take the differences among their existing and potential listeners into account. So should we.
I skimmed the two articles, thank you. I’m not so interested in technical details of hifi anymore. Only if it helps me put together a better sounding system. My assumption is that competition over time takes care of technical excellence. It is the entry fee for participating in a technology marketplace. The mindset of the crucial people in a firm is quite important for example. Plus, we are consumers not developers and hence have the most suited measurement instrument attached to the two sides of our skulls. 
For our reading pleasure I recommend the book ‘Introduction to the Sociology of Music’ by Theodor Adorno. While touching music listening only at the fringes, it is a good example of how one can start out with a view and then corroborate or disprove it by doing appropriate research. Or through valid reasoning for that matter. And that in a highly complex field very different from the hard sciences or technology engineering.
This book might be interesting too. Again not 100% on topic, but apparently worthwhile. It’s written by the architect behind Pandora radio’s engine and the Music Genome Project: ‘Why You Like It: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste’ by Dr. Nolan Gasser. There’s an interview with him here:
When it comes to the intricacies of the human mind, western science is still in its infancy. As soon as one permits the mind as an instrument to research mind, the Buddhist science of mind is very advanced and has not yet been falsified by contemporary research in neuroscience or psychology. That science of mind has a long scholarly tradition with many extensive treatises and can be understood separate from the religion. It has a head start over the West of about two millennia. Here are Wikipedia articles as an introduction to the framework.
Clearly you’re veering way off topic for this thread. You might want to consider a separate thread on these, shall we say, more esoteric, topics 
Your factual suggestion as such has merit. As to your (repeated) way of delivery I now feel compelled to comment that arrogance and narrow mindedness are fraternal twins.
By ‘esoteric’ you probably mean alien to you or others like you. There are esoteric teachings of the Buddha, but the science of mind is not. The convergence of spirituality and science is a vivid, bleeding edge, and highly exciting field.
As to the separate thread - I will mull it over as it needs more thinking to start one. It only makes sense to spend more valuable time, if an inquiry into the mind of the listener is seen as worthwhile in our community. Maybe the ones interested send me a private message?
Marco, if you notice, in my first post in this thread, I used the word “personally” to suggest a personal subjective opinion that I wasn’t expecting to debate. But since you felt compelled to argue the point, I tried to steer the conversation back to a more tangible objective angle.
Everybody has both objective and subjective, or even spirit-ual ( ) views about their system and how and why it sounds the way it does (there are no Vulcan, pure logic, beings here ).
I think it’s perfectly fine to discuss/debate subjective views online, but it’s just not for me. Simple as that, no malice or arrogance intended 
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I don’t subscribe to the subjective / objective framing. Mostly because it implicitly tilts the scale toward materialism / positivism. Those two strands of thought are very powerful in developed nations. That does not make them universally right. Above, I pointed beyond the single individual in vein. Matters of the mind are validly knowable and debatable.
That makes no sense. A spiritual tradition can inform the view of the mind and with it the experience of listening. Plus it gives an appreciation for the commonalities and differences between individuals’ minds. That’s it. No system involved.
Oh thats too bad then
Stating one’s personal preference based on your state of mind is perfectly normal, most posts here on dcs.community are such anyway!
However, IMHO, any rational debate about the efficacy of one setting versus another or one platform versus another, has to also substantially include an accepted objective frame of reference.
That’s at the smug end of possibilities for a reply. An interested version would ask what I propose instead. Generative and perceptive I would accept. Both sides have their valid and very different modes of inquiry.
Yes. That seems to rhyme with what I already stated above - it is not enough to talk about the technical / generative side. Therefore I provided three “frames of reference” to help make objective the perceptive side. You keep disrespecting that by diminishing it to “personal preference”.
I’m quite sure you are able to understand the value of empiricism, systems theory or a science of mind for the purpose of making perception objective and debatable. I love intellectual challenges, if both parties act in an intellectually honest fashion. I’m out.