Music upsampling

[TopperMC 1]

Hello all. I have my music mainly in flac, ripped from own CDs, so it is in 16bit/44kHz. Playing on my Receiver sounds better with wav/96kHz.

Question: is Emby able to upsample my music "on the fly"? If yes, how can I manage this?

Thx, Magnus

[Abobader 3470]

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[Luke 42085]

Hi, there is nothing technically preventing this, but we just don't' currently expose any up-sampling features.

[TopperMC 1]

So, is it already on the bucket list? Could be interesting for audiophiles, if precisely adjustable... I would appreciate! Thx

[MSI2017 48]

On 11/6/2022 at 3:56 AM, Luke said:

Hi, there is nothing technically preventing this, but we just don't' currently expose any up-sampling features.

Good, keep it like that. As a HiFi enthusiast, upsampling should not be done.

[TopperMC 1]

Well, this is your opinion <eom>

[MSI2017 48]

Just now, TopperMC said:

Well, this is your opinion <eom>

True but it is objectively worse since there are alterations to the sound tha should not be done. But if you really like it better that way you can. just convert (so upsample) them yourself

[pwhodges 2014]

As a former audio engineer I can tell you that upsampling cannot improve the sound in the audio stream.  But it can happen that a poor quality DAC might have such poor brickwall filtering at 44.1 or 48kHz that this degrades the sound more than it does at higher sample rates. 

Paul

[softworkz 5073]

14 hours ago, MSI2017 said:

it is objectively worse since there are alterations to the sound tha should not be done

With a high-quality upsampling algorithm this wouldn't be true. 

19 hours ago, MSI2017 said:

As a HiFi enthusiast, upsampling should not be done.

But I surely wouldn't let a computer/soundcard/driver do it. 

Another point is about the DAC when you are listening. Even with a cheap DAC, it will usually be the component with the highest level of expertise in shaping waveforms from digital data and might do it's own interim "upsampling" during conversion. When you do upsampling manually before playing - e.g. with some software - then the upsampling might differ from how the DAC would handle it, and then, the DAC might provide inferior results  compared to when doing it all alone.

[softworkz 5073]

 

11 hours ago, pwhodges said:

As a former audio engineer I can tell you that upsampling cannot improve the sound in the audio stream.  

Very correct. The situation changes though, as soon as you are doing something with the audio other than listening - which is obviously not the case here, though.

11 hours ago, pwhodges said:

But it can happen that a poor quality DAC might have such poor brickwall filtering at 44.1 or 48kHz that this degrades the sound more than it does at higher sample rates. 

I'm not sure about that in this case, because the DAC would probably be the DAC from the receiver (unless it's an analog connection)

On 11/5/2022 at 5:46 PM, TopperMC said:

I have my music mainly in flac, ripped from own CDs, so it is in 16bit/44kHz. Playing on my Receiver sounds better with wav/96kHz.

@TopperMC - Do you have a digital connection to your receiver?

If yes, is your receiver able to show the sampling rate for a certain connection during playback?

My suspicion would be that

soundcard >> receiver might be connected at 96kHz in a fixed way (rather than dynamically changing the output format).
If that would be the case, then it would explain the inferior quality of 44kHz media  because the soundcard might not be that good in re-sampling 44 to 96 - which an odd conversion.
Again, If that would be the case, you might be able to change your soundcard's output to 44kHz and you wouldn't need any upsampling anymore.

The previous paragraph is based on a lot of assumptions, though...

[TopperMC 1]

@softworkzsetup ist a bit different. Music is stored on a Windows Server. In a virtual machine today is a Minimserver running which has the capability to upsample. In the middle is a BubbleUPnP control point, which is "connecting" my Receiver (Cambridge Audio with an integrated DAC) directly to the Minimserver stream via Ethernet. I can't set any output parameters in integrated DAC, at least I wouldn't have a clue how to do it.

Even to me it is clear that upsampling can't increase audio quality, therefore I mentioned that it sounds better, and this is a subjective evaluation... shouldn't have mentioned "audiophiles"

I am now thinking of changing Setup. Decision of ripping Audio to flac was due to storing Metadata in the file directly.

[softworkz 5073]

10 hours ago, TopperMC said:

I am now thinking of changing Setup. Decision of ripping Audio to flac was due to storing Metadata in the file directly.

Changing your "ripping" method doesn't seem to be a good idea.

I don't know the products you mentioned, but just make sure that when you follow the digital path that the audio is going through is all 44kHz.