Zp 24/96

Like to add another vote for 24/96 - let us audiophiles choose our DACs and auxillary gear. We can use the cullen mod units of this world for better sound quality but it all starts at the source. Also alot of people are now digitising records at this format so another reason to go this way.
Vote 24/96!
BTW Logitech just announced a new touchscreen squueeze box with 24/96 which has me tempted as I haven't invested in sonos yet.

ugh. just when i think im ready to go for sonos another gotcha like this pops in that puts me back on the fence.

I wonder if someone help with a fairly basic and possibly dumb question concerning the ZP-80/90 with the Cullen mod.

I'm assuming that the mod provides a 96/24 output through the SPDIF output only, which would be fine for my purposes since I have an all-digital 96/24 Meridian system to pipe it into. But what I am confused about is how the Sonos software, which would otherwise refuse to play the file, it being an unsupported format, now decides it's OK to do so. Is this something the Cullem mod takes care through new firmware or does it happen through some behind-the-scenes magic?

I wonder if someone help with a fairly basic and possibly dumb question concerning the ZP-80/90 with the Cullen mod.

I'm assuming that the mod provides a 96/24 output through the SPDIF output only, which would be fine for my purposes since I have an all-digital 96/24 Meridian system to pipe it into. But what I am confused about is how the Sonos software, which would otherwise refuse to play the file, it being an unsupported format, now decides it's OK to do so. Is this something the Cullem mod takes care through new firmware or does it happen through some behind-the-scenes magic?

It doesn't magically allow the Sonos software to play 96/24 files, it takes files that can be played through Sonos and up-converts them to 96/24.

Well thank you for that but it doesn't really answer the question. I'm not interested in 'up-converting' CD quality (44.1/16) files to 96/24 but in playing 'high-res' files that are already in that format through the ZP.

Can anyone confirm that the Cullen mod actually enables that functionality?

Well thank you for that but it doesn't really answer the question. I'm not interested in 'up-converting' CD quality (44.1/16) files to 96/24 but in playing 'high-res' files that are already in that format through the ZP.

Can anyone confirm that the Cullen mod actually enables that functionality?

I did answer the question. The Cullen mod does not allow the ZP to play 'high-res' files already in that format through the ZP, it only upconverts.

Thank you so much for the clarification. You have saved me from spending $550 on a useless upgrade.

jgatie.... Peter is right. I have the Cullen mod. it basically puts in a better clock and an upsampler board. It's worth the money. Take a look at the website. Mr Cullen is also very helpful in answering questions as well...it will only play 16/44.1 files like a regular ZP.

Don't forget there are heaps of DAC's out there that upsample like this as well, but alot of owners don't even realize it! :D

If you want just 16/44.1 get the empirical mod...

ugh. just when i think im ready to go for sonos another gotcha like this pops in that puts me back on the fence.

Chris. Don't neglect the ease of use factor...:)

jgatie.... Peter is right. I have the Cullen mod. it basically puts in a better clock and an upsampler board.

Upsampling is primarily done to make the filtering of "aliasing" noise easier/better. When performing a D to A conversion, you get a lot of high-frequency "copies" of the waveform. These are known as "aliases". Traditionally these are filtered with an "anti-aliasing filter" out to prevent them causing problems elsewhere. The view is they aren't audible and might cause problems further along the signal chain.

With "upsampling" the you are increasing the effective sampling rate which shifts the aliases further out. This allows the filter to be less abrupt, which is easier to do well. In general most people agree that the primary audio benefits of upsampling are because of the different characteristics of these filters compared to native sampling rate ones. Some people ascribe the benefits of oversampling to this too.

One theory behind this is that the characteristics of the upsampled filtered signal can reduce the impact of non-linearities in the DAC by averaging these out.

The view is the less-strict filters also allow some of the high-frequency alias spectrum through and that, in modern multi-bit DACs, the alias signals actually help the DAC to average out some of the non-linear distortion, due to the way they work (exactly how is never specified that I have seen, so I'm a little sceptical).

I'm not familiar with what the Cullen mod does exactly, but I'm assuming that the 96k upsampled output specifically has these additional frequency component "aliases" present (as allowed for by the increased audio bandwidth available) which an external DAC can use. Presumably this also has a similar benefit to the Sonos internal DAC.

I have seen suggestions that this sort of upsampling is actually more beneficial than having real 96k data. The reasoning behind that is because beyond 22kHz (44kHz sample rate) the frequencies really are inaudible (although some argue that the non audible stuff has a beneficial effect on the audible stuff... I'm personally not convinced on this). The problem is that with a 96k native rate, the aliasing is much higher in frequency and you don't get the benefit of the averaging which reduces the non-linear distortion. The summary of this is that (apparently) whilst there is more musical information in a native 96k signal, most of the additional information is inaudible and, therefore, of no audible benefit but you still have non-linear distortions in the audible range. With a 44.1k upsampled signal, you get the benefit of the reduction in audible distortion. Personally I think this sounds a bit hooky.

Cheers,

Keith