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Recently found out that Foobar 2000 supports real time upscaling. I've been using this for a week now, and the difference is very noticeable, especially with headphones. It's as if one's stored CD files are now all available for playback as Hi-Res.
Who's using this? For those using, what are your thoughts?
" Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you"
Satchel Paige
Do you remember MSB Link DAC III? It had upsampling option. In order to save money, I purchased the chip and DIYed myself. I didn't like the result at all. I will stay with bit perfect.Yes, I did that 25 years ago. Yet the Apollo 11 mission, launched on July 16, 1969, marked the first time humans landed on the Moon.
What you could do in the past, doesn't mean you can do it again today.
Things do not move forward. They move backward.
Edits: 05/08/25 05/08/25 05/08/25
The PGGB-RT is a different (more sophisticated) implementation than a legacy upgrade chip. Rest assured the legacy chip did not increase bit length to 107 bits like PGGB-RT. The level of processing that PGGB-RT performs simply was not possible back then. It's more akin to HQ Player, albeit a stripped down version.
Bit perfect is a completely different issue from upscaling/filtering. All DAC's (with the exception of NOS) provide some level of oversampling/and filtering. PGGB-RT just provides additional filtering. The results are audible, and has always provided an overall improvement in quality.
" Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you"
Satchel Paige
Recently I purchased a couple of products made by another country. I was shocked by the high tech ingredients and quality. I feel hopeless.
Enjoy your 107bit.
You killed people's creativity, you are doomed.
I guess it makes sense they might sound better. Is there some reason they would sound more like the original high res recording than the .wav file does?
I really want to get more into high res but creating it from .wav files seems like cheating to me. Not wanting to invest in SACD or buy high res files my only source of high res is going to be free concert downloads and recording vinyl using a high res recorder.
I use foobar. Any chance those upscaled CD tracks can be saved as high res files?
as to how you seemingly *recover* information that was never captured in the recording process.
You can change or diddle with the signal and like it but that doesn't seem to fit the definition of fidelity to me.
Give it a whirl. I think people assume that there are no inherent errors in converting 16 bit 44.1 KHz files. What I think is happening is that the higher sampling frequency and expanded bit rate is simply reducing non linearities with the file conversion.
Golden Sound has a number of videos explaining DAC filtering with different topologies, each employs its own version of filtering (or not with NOS DACs). This is just another method of filtering the DAC output, like HQ Player, except this is much easier to use.
The difference is definitely audible, and sounds (Subjectively) improved over straight DAC conversions.
" Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you"
Satchel Paige
I want no part of using a general purpose Mac/Win box for music playback. I use tiny Linux based endpoints dedicated for music playback only. Don't want hundreds of useless processes and services going on in the background getting swapped in and out of memory.
File conversion? My files are FLAC but decompressing them has nothing to do with sample rate.
Enjoy as you will. I prefer buying or listening to original studio resolution content. :)
Go on Tidal, and look at many of the more popular artists (Jethro Tull as an example), and check out just how many versions of a given album exist. Which one is the original intended recording?
There are always remastering versions of the recordings. I see no downside to applying algorithms to further enhance the D to A conversion process. It does not add anything not already there. It just improves the reconstruction of the analog waveform from a digital source.
" Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you"
Satchel Paige
*classic rock* that was recorded long before digital. Virtually all content released in the past ten years or so is 24 bit at various sample rates. That is the original. Not the 30 ips tape in the case of Jethro Tull!
I'm a retired IT guy but want the least amount of post processing involved. If I were to transcode, I would do it in advance and play the new version.
Is what we are all after. Regardless of the source material, the intent is to get the playback to sound as close to the source as possible. There are some outstanding recordings from the 50's and 60's that are high quality, certainly better than may made digitally during the loudness wars era.
Regardless of the source, what we are talking about here is replaying 16 bit/44.1 KHz files. Specifically, processing the 16 bit file to get to sound as close to the original as possible.
I've done some further looking into the RGGB-RT upscaling. I have a Topping DX9 on hand, and used it to upscale the CD files to 705 KHz. There is no doubt that the upscaled files sounded better than left at default processing. A lot better, in fact. The only issue is one needs sufficient horsepower from the computer to process the upscaled files.
" Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you"
Satchel Paige
There are some outstanding recordings from the 50's and 60's that are high quality, certainly better than may made digitally during the loudness wars era.
I have some outstanding 1950's Mercury Living Presence recordings engineered by Wilma Fine Cozart captured in 176/24 along with other less impressive quality examples by Led Zeppelin, Astrid Gilberto, Renaissance, et. al. either in 192/24 or 96/24. No need to dumb them down to 44/16 only to later *fix* them.
Diddle with the signal as you will. I prefer higher resolution digital remasters from tape either in my downloads library or from Qobuz. :)
I fully understand your position. I also have quite a number of hi-res recordings that do not require diddling, as you say. :-)
Having said that, I also have a LOT (too many) CD's dating back to the 80's and 90's that I would like to enjoy to the maximum extent possible. Using the PGGB-RT software with a recent vintage computer with sufficient processing power, the results are undeniable. Comparing the upscaled CD's to what is available on TIDAL, the upscaled CD's in the vast majority of cases sound better.
With headphones, the difference is very noticeable, as the DAC I'm using supports 705 KHz input.
As they say, "Horses For Courses"
" Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you"
Satchel Paige
Comparing the upscaled CD's to what is available on TIDAL...
I haven't used them for over five years as they wasted time with MQA and it took them years to figure out it was a joke. I enjoy having access to far more (true) 24 bit recordings with Qobuz.
Been using this for a week now, and its one of the most significant upgrades I've come across to date.
I had a Chord M-Scaler awhile back. I find this S/W to work better than the M-Scaler. It absolutely sounds better than playing CD's, and I'm finding it sounds better than any of the streaming options.
One of the tricks foobar has is the ability to analyze replay gain and optimize the file. Now, combine that with using 32 bit depth, 107 bit speed precision, and the supported upscaled frequency, and the results are self evident.
" Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you"
Satchel Paige
That's why I asked you if we can save the upscaled tracks. Trying it to me means starting with a higher res track converting it to wav then comparing the upscaled results both visually and audibly. And FWIW listening on my PC and listening on my hifi are two different things.
Thanks for the heads up. No doubt a run time upscaler on my PC system seems like a great idea to me.
PGGB-IT now has an option to process albums/tracks in an Azure virtual machine. The instances selected for the tests described here, upsampling to DSD 512 was around $2 per album:
https://audiowise-canada.myshopify....supports-processing-on-azure-virtual-machines
" Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you"
Satchel Paige
"https://audiowise-canada.myshopify....supports-processing-on-azure-virtual-machines/"
Won't fly without domain. Having an ellipsis is odd, too.
If there is a way to save the file as upscaled, haven't worked out how to achieve it. For me, it's not an issue, as it converts on the fly with no bugs once its set up.
" Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you"
Satchel Paige
Yes if it sounds better on the PC system it's all good. Foobar is my UI for my PC system. I added the uPnP media server plug in several months back and it works but IMO it's kind of kludgy. Regardless for now anyway not so interested in streaming my own files on the internet. I'm listening to digital files on a USB hard drive to either an RPi or a Cambridge MXN10 music server.
Works well from foobar. So does usb.
" Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you"
Satchel Paige
I'm using Audio Engine 2A loudspeakers on the PC system with foobar via USB. Works fine as my PC based system. For now I'm just not interested in streaming my own digital files though I suspect somewhere down the road I might consider a Roon solution.
What processor are you using and what's the load while using real time pggb? Any playback lag problems?
Processor load has not been an issue. I have it configured to work with the PCM 1792A DAC chip, which is what is in my headphone setup DAC, along with my Devialet Expert pro (24 Bit-176.4 192 KHz). I've tried it with a older Alienware 13 64 bit with Windows 10, and a Microsoft Go 2 64 bit computer.
Very satisfied with this setup.
" Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you"
Satchel Paige
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