Upsampling 16-bit / 44.1 Khz Music To Enhance It Options

[Sam Ash]

Hi all, just found this site (very interesting !) and am quite pleased to be a new member.I am quite interested to try and up-sample my normal music files (AIFF/WAVE - 16 bit, 44.1 Khz) to higher specs eg. 24 bit, 96 Khz or 192 Khz using Mac OS X based software that is specialised to do this kind of stuff. Does anyone know of any really good up-sampling software for the Mac ?

Once I manage to upsample them, I can burn DVD-Audio discs and play them through my Denon DVD1940 player which is compliant with DVD-A and SACD discs, it has a 192 kHz / 24-Bit (Burr-Brown DSD1608) 8-channel Audio D/A converter. My DVD player is connected to my A/V receiver (Onkyo TX-SR606). This is a good receiver but has no sonic up-sampling ability like some of the higher end Receivers such as Cambridge Audio which have the Q5 up-sampling technology (Highly rated) by Anagram Technologies of Switzerland.

I am using full range KEF speakers and have spent quite a bit of money on getting decent interconnects to maintain good signal quality between devices in order to prevent any loss in sound quality.

So, all in all, my intention is to be able to up-sample all my music to 24 bit / 192 Khz using the best up-sampling software on the Mac.I could then burn the up-sampled files on DVD-Audio discs for play-back on my player.

Has anyone attempted this ? Any suggestions on good Sampling conversion software for the Mac ? - I came across "Sample Manager" by Audiofile Engineering. They use a sample converter made by Izotope which apparently is supposed to be very good. Does anyone know about this or have any experience with it ?

I know the fact that decent audio up-sampling technology does make a difference, I just need input from audio experts or enthusiasts.

Any advice and input will be appreciated.

Sam

Ce message a été modifié par Sam Ash - jeu. 11 sept. 2008, 09:02.

[Jim Hoyland]

Can't really advise you on the upsampling process, other than to say I would be tempted to run the audio through some nice converters and decent analogue gear (some kind of summing mixer or valve pre-amp / eq / compressor) before re-recording at the higher sampling rate rather than relying on a software process.

However, I've been unable to find Mac software that will author DVD-A or SACD. The most widely used software seems to be DiscWelder by Minnetonka, but that's PC only.

My students currently use DTS-HD to get high sample-rates on a deliverable format, although this requires authoring to DVD-V and then either a DVD player with built-in DTS decoding (rare) or an AV amp with DTS support for playback.

We're actually tempted to buy our first ever PC to get round this...

[FastEddy]

" ... I would be tempted to run the audio through some nice converters and decent analogue gear ..."

Yes, indeed ... Best advise is to get as close to the original masters as possible, first. If this means recording / digitizing from vinyl or even decent tape = super. There are plenty of tape-aholics in the audiophile world. Then just get a decent external hardware DAC = I use the Echo Digital Audio AudioFire 2 at home connected to my iMac and capture with GarageBand & iTunes plus the Echo provided control software @ 24 bit / 96K stereo, flat with ~ 20 db down from any clipping.

Conversion from 16 bit to 24 bit has never been quite satisfying, IMOP = BUT capture from SACD and then converting = really works out great = go for the really big file sizes as indication you are capturing the highest resolution (but you knew that already).

Ce message a été modifié par FastEddy - ven. 12 sept. 2008, 16:20.

[FastEddy]

... juts found this nice little "how to" so you can make some decent playback discs ... for backup and playback on better stereos. = "Burning downloaded music onto DVD-A" = http://www.linnrecords.com/linn-help-downl...c-onto-DVD.aspx

[Sam Ash]

Jim /Eddy,

Thank you for your response. Maybe you could try this product and tell me what you think about the up-sampling ability. You can download a fully working demo version that works for 15 days here (trial version) :-

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/samplemanager/

I used this software to upsample some of my 16 bit, 44.1 Khz music files but was unable to burn them onto a DVD-Audio disc to test them out in my DVD-Audio compatible DVD player that is part of my music/home cinema set-up. Apparently I use Mac computers and am unable to find DVD-A authoring software.

There is DVD-A authoring software for the PC, here is the link:-

http://www.cirlinca.com/

Jim, maybe some of your students can give this a trial run and evaluate the end-results. It would be nice to get a down-to-earth opinion on its real world performance.

Sam

[Sam Ash]

Apparently, Sample Manager software (by Audiofile Engineering) incorporates technology by Izotope which is highly rated. Here is some information:-

The Izotope SRC
The iZotope 64-bit SRC™ utilizes a hyrbrid algorithm providing the highest quality and most customizable resampling available on the market today.

MBIT+
iZotope's MBIT+™ dithering algorithm features psychoacoustic noise shaping, based on research with actual musical material, making it the best sounding dither on the market.

For more information, have a look at this link :-

http://izotope.com/tech/

Sam

[lancet]

this may help.
-- i have NOT tried it.

http://crush.epix.net/~scb/dvd-audiofile/D...ile0.74.mac.zip

[Sam Ash]

Hi Lancet,

I went to the link but the downloaded file decompresses to a blank document.

Can you point me to aan alternative link or file ?

Cheers,

Sam


New A/V receivers and amps have additional hardware and software to upsample music and I have read about people who have heard these systems and acknowledge the increase in sonic detail. The source material is standard 16-bit, 44.1 Khz material.

I was wondering whether this is possible manually using good upsampling software technology. I could then burn the upsampled tracks onto DVD by using a DVD-A authoring software.

I would then play the tracks on my DVD player which is DVD-A and SACD compatible, this is linked to my A/V receiver which is capable of receiving sonic data at higher specs. However my receiver does not have upsampling capabilities.

Has anyone out there researched this issue on a practical level ?

Sam