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Zero Oversampling: The Saga Continues...
Article by Steven R. Rochlin
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When i reviewed the Audio Note DAC Kit 1.1 in February of 2000, i had no idea of the floodgate that would be released. While all the mainstream rags are enjoying the huge color advertising campaign and talking about Sony's unapproved by the WG-4 SACD audio, Enjoy the Music.com™ came out with a review of a unit that not only did not play these higher sampling rate discs, it did not use tried and true oversampling technics! Let me explain.
Sony's SACD format is not only not being accepted by many software vendors, the independent council who decides what is a "standard" does not approve of the Sony SACD format. This is why, unlike other magazines, we here at Enjoy the Music.com want to let you know that Sony's format is therefore proprietary in nature. Furthermore, with little support at this time from other software companies i can see no real future for the format. While Sony does own quite a few recordings for which they can enjoy and small audiophile labels will sell out their goods to virtually anyone with money, an overwhelming majority of music is not available to Sony and possibly never will be. Therefore the future of SACD is in question. Call it a speed bump on the road of life. Once DVD-Audio is released all the dust will eventually settle in nicely. So what does this have to do with zero oversampling?
Well, it seems that maybe we have all been duped into believing that oversampling was beneficial. Maybe our good ol' 16-bit 44.1 kHz systems really are not as bad as many of us have been hearing. Could it be that some wise guy came up with the scapegoat of jitter while the real problem with in the oversampling and filtering method? Could be. Jitter this, jitter that... Such small things which yes, does seems to make a difference, yet really does not seem to be the Holy Grail. In other words, yes, jitter is bad, yet elimination of the oversampling seems to make a much bigger difference.
The above is not really new news. While we seem to be the first real magazine to attempt to fully explore this, this subject has been discussed in the wonderful Asian magazine MJ. In fact i know of a certain tube "guru" who gets his info from MJ and then claims the new discoveries as his own. i, instead, would like to thank Yoshi of 47 Labs/Sakura Systems for allowing us to enjoy all three parts of a great article in MJ. As MJ is an Asian magazine and therefore in the Japanese language, we are fortunate to have the ability of a translator so that it now appears in English for the benefit of our readership. This article, written by Ryohei Kusunoki, is all about the advantages of using no oversampling filter and appeared in MJ in three parts from November 1996 through December 1997.
As many of you know, 47 Labs/Sakura Systems also makes their own non-oversampling DAC unit (4505 Progression DAC). Not only do i have the Audio Note Kit DAC 1.1 here, but i also have the Progression DAC as well. Expect a comparison review shortly. For now i would like to share with you all three parts of the wonderful article by Ryohei Kusunoki. It appears here in the Adobe Acrobat format. Please click here if you do not have the standard plug-in needed to read Adobe Acrobat files.
The saga continues...
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