on "44.1 Khz is enough" and oversampling

[Kaux]

I wasreading this article in sos:

 

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep07/articles/digitalmyths.htm

 

Great article, it explains a lot about the fundamentals of digital audio. But two questions remain in my head, so i came here to ask:

 

1. Do every interface outthere use oversampliing today?

 

2. If not, then it would make sense to use higher sample rates so aliasing occurs at supersonic frequencys , wouldnt it?

 

Thanks in advance

[Lee Flier]

 

Great article, it explains a lot about the fundamentals of digital audio. But two questions remain in my head, so i came here to ask: 1. Do every interface outthere use oversampliing today?

 

 

I can't imagine a modern converter that wouldn't use oversampling - even the consumer grade ones do.

 

That still doesn't mean the oversample is perfect, or the lo pass filter that filters out frequencies above 44.1 is perfect, or that the reconstruction filter in the DAC is perfect (especially in consumer grade playback gear). So it may help to use higher sample rates anyway... we don't really have a definitive answer for that yet because there haven't been formal comparisons done on enough different types of equipment.

[Kaux]

Oh, thanks!

[Sonic Jedi]

Plus, oversampling has some benefits if you are messing around with any time or pitch stuff (i.e. pitch correction, pitch shifting, speading up or slowing down a part, etc.)

[dekkersj]

Oversampling is something that is commodity nowadays. Some audiophile designs do not use it, but that has more to do with religion. I did some experiments where I emulated the effect of the non-oversampling behaviour and the third orde Bessel low pass that can be found in such designs. No one could distinguish between hardware non-oversampling and a software manipulated oversampled system. There is a slight difference between non-oversampled (incl. a small low pass filtering to remove some RF content) and oversampled systems which are flat within reasonable limits.

 

In conclusion, it is not necessary to have a perfect system. It should be good enough and with oversampling that is easily reached.

 

Regards,

Jacco