Many up-samplers (including those in many DACs) lack DSP headroom. With highly dynamically compressed input (read most mainstream music since 90s) the up-sampling creates new samples that should be over 0dB but aren't.
I think this is one area where people with soundbars, smart phones etc. with digital volume control have it better than many audiophiles. Surely, such recordings are mangled in ways that can't be undone. Without digital attenuation (volume), they're often mangled in a further unnecessary way. Proper digital volume control uses dither. This adds noise but no signal-correlated distortion. I use SoX for up-sampling. I need to shift down by 1 bit before doing up-sampling, this provides headroom but keeps it bit-perfect prior to up-sampling. Then I up-sample, apply the rest of the volume control and dither. Digital headroom (either in the DAC like in the BM DAC2/3, or before it) is absolutely essential for modern recordings IMO. Check it, add to it! http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/ SB Touch ------------------------------------------------------------------------ darrenyeats's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10799 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=111714 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
