Any justification or evidence for thinking that?
I think he is referring to “if it’s not there, you can’t add it.”
If you are playing mp3’s, for example, the output of the player is only going to reflect the transient frequency of those files as they are played. What the OP is not taking into consideration, is the quality of overall output while mixing multiple sources and utilizing FX.
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Yeah, not to mention advantages depending on the types of resampling being done and the DAC stages. Even on the old DJM-800 when piping 44.1 into it, switching the rear from 96 to the lower settings is a rude awakening when going into another DSP… granted there’s no internal sample rate work setting on the Pioneer. I presume the x1800 sample rate setting is for matching it to your computer and USB audio, as on the X1700.
If I export a project in a daw and it’s set to 44.1, what good would setting the mixer to a higher sample do?
There’s no need to keep prattling on about ancient stuff. It don’t matter what some old kit did or didn’t do. Here’s a denon dj forum. Just talk denon
What are you talking about?
The older stuff isn’t so old that it’s irrelevant.
Potentially higher quality processing within the mixer.
What older stuff are you referring to?
I may not be understanding this principle. If the source is made with a lower sample rate, how would processing it in a higher sample rate help the sound? Is there a video explaining?
See about 30%,of your posts. They seem to use mentions of old tech and long long length as an a way of attempting to score credibility.
That’s a good question. There is specifically NOT a video metaphor that does it justice. The nature of both electronic and acoustic instruments has a lot to do with even-order harmonics and it’s possible to interpolate these harmonics. Even if you’re not interested in that aspect, end-user or DSP coder, all resampling methods have trade-offs. Using simple, linear resampling methods produce all sorts of issues if it’s not just in the right circumstances. Every time you have to resample digital audio information you have a whole variety of techniques available, some very processing-intensive (one tradeoff) and pretty ingenius. Some of it can make the sound more “analog-like” than what you started, while others you’re just trying to find ways of minimizing aliasing distortion on the presence regions of human hearing (most sensitive areas for us). Most modern high-end DACs now have their own oversampling multiplier just specifically so a different filter can be used. One of the reasons DACs sound so much better than 40 years ago. You might not even like or be able to tell a difference with higher sampling rates, though, depending on the implimentation. You might send 44.1 into a digital mixer like the X1800 and even prefer the sound of it staying in 44.1
It’s important to know where you were in order to know where you’re going. You have to compare things like that. Comparing denon present to denon past isn’t as effective as taking a wider perspective by also comparing with other brands and what they did/are doing.
Oh, from what I gather of that it isn’t so clear-cut, and simply comes down to what’s required for a certain scenario?
If you had a massive, massive amount of processing and could deal with a certain amount of lag/latency due to a kind of reverse direction feedback that has to be used (hence the delay), you can use many-point interpolative upsampling and FIR filters with windowing functions to either resample up or down to any distance and get amazing results regardless of scenarios/applications, but short of that, which is everywhere except off-line-processing with a powerful computer, there are going to be trade-offs. The x1700 can do a kind of cotton gloves handling of 44.1 by just staying in 44.1, but I still find 96 to be way way more musical on it. That’s just me, though. YMMV. The SC5000 sends out 96, anyway, so you might as well keep the x1800 in 96. If you have to use a lower sampling rate in a DAW, I’d recommend 48khz in the DAW if you can, as it’s an even division (and 44.1 usually puts the filter artifacts in the presence region of hearing). I’d also still record it to 96 and then downsample as a final step if necessary using something like iZotope’s stuff in post rather than just changing what the mixer is set as. That’s going to use more hard drive space, though, and if you’re playing from Traktor and the mixer has to be at a lower sampling rate for USB audio, then obviously that’s the deciding factor.
To keep it simple I have the prime sc5000’s hooked up to the x1800 and running serato pro 2.05. The majority of my music library is in .mp3 format. I have no control over how the mp3’s are made. I am simply wondering what the advantages of setting the mixer to 96 were. Since the mixer had the capability, i figured it must be there for a reason so why not give it a try.
I am using serato, and using 1 sc5000 as primary usb and the other is plugged directly into the primary and they are in controller mode. Does that constitute an analog signal i thought that was digital?
All that matters in this case is how the sound is getting into the mixer.
With Serato sound does not go through the players.
I can now state with confidence a few things on this subject:
The X1800’s sample rate conversion, particularly the upsampling, is significantly inferior to the X1700’s interpolative variety. If you input 44.1khz SPDIF into the X1800 when the mixer is set to 96khz, you’re just mucking up the signal. The X1800’s upsampled highs in particular sound like there’s some upper octave strangeness going on and it’s just not as pristine overall.
The overall processing of the X1800 (can’t say if it’s the clock or the maths or what) is maybe very slightly inferior to the X1700, but some of the choices made on things like the EQs and the novel iso bypass makes the X1800 quite a bit more transparent in some respects to the original digital signal for a number of reasons other than the overall processing. If you put the same sample rate into the mixer as the mixer is set at, the X1800 just sounds a tiny bit dry and the mids have a teensy kind of recessed or withdrawn flavor that’s not as expressive as the mids originally were in the SPDIF stream if you compare using a common outboard DAC and the X1800 in and out of the path. In such a scenario, the X1800’s SPDIF out when not using effects is at least as transparent to the original SPDIF input as any mid-fi consumer digital home theater receiver. When not using the SRC on the X1700, much of the difference in sound is its isos coloring the signal in a pleasing way, with the rest mostly seeming to just be the slightly better mids’ processing on it. Let me put it this way… the X1800’s core processing is accurate enough to at least hear SRC effects… on the players, on the mixer, on your computer after recording and playing back with an OS mismatch, etc.
Using the lower sample rate settings on the X1800 with the Prime players’ current SPDIF produces additional sample rate conversion (SRC) artifacts that are less-than-desirable except for one aspect: the Prime players currently wildly resample everything themselves, the layer and SPDIF don’t change to match the file being played, you can’t change the rate the layer and the SPDIF are running at manually to match your files, and the SPDIF is always at 96khz. The SRC on the Prime players produces intermodulation and nonlinear distortion, including some ultrasonic garbage that can reduce the performance of downstream gear like amplifiers, headphones, and tweeters… probably even the X1800’s own headphone jack is having a performance drop from the ultrasonics. If you set the X1800 to a lower sample rate than 96khz, while it adds some distortion of its own, it will also roll off that ultrasonic garbage. So you sort of have to pick your poison when using the Prime players with the X1800. This probably also explains why using the Prime players with certain analog mixers that naturally roll off the audio over 20khz might seem more pleasant in some ways right now. The X1800 at 96khz is accurate enough to fully reproduce that ultrasonic grunge from the Prime players’ current processing.
Listing these threads below so people can find their way back to this post here later:
https://community.enginedj.com/t/the-sound-of-the-x1800-tell-me-please/
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