hi, im very excited and lucky to have an oladra on the way.
My system will comprise only the oladra, direct to Dutch & Dutch 8c speakers over AES. These speakers have built in Dac and amps and resample everything to 48khz - they can’t play any other sample rate.
My question is where is the best place to do the resampling, either up or down, to 48? On the oladra, in the speakers, or using roon?
Also i read a comment from Mark that he is not a big fan of hi res files. Given that my speakers resample to 48khz, am i wasting my time with Qobuz hi res 96khz files, or is there any benefit in SQ to be obtained from starting with a higher than 48khz source, when everything will end up at 48khz anyway?
HQPlayer would do the best job with this but I’m not sure the cost of the license would be justified.
I’m pretty sure that Squeeze can do this with the C-3PO plug in. Squeeze can be the most transparent option, especially when Squeeze is also the server.
Having the resampling done in Roon isn’t a bad idea either. I think I’d pick that over allowing the speakers to resample everything. It wouldn’t hurt though to do an A/B test.
There are two fundamental frequencies: 44.1k and 48k. Every other frequency is an integer multiplier against one of these.
Resampling from 192k or 96k will be a clean process as these divide evenly into 48k.
44.1k won’t divide evenly into 48k obviously. I believe the term they use for this is decimation. That will cause a loss in fidelity from a mathematics perspective.
With most music being at 44.1k it’s unfortunate they chose 48k.
The reclocker in the Oldara likely has two clocks, with one running at each fundamental frequency. The best result will come from playing 44.1k at 44.1k with the 44.1k clock governing the digital conversion being done by the DAC.
Only your ears can decide that. Purely from a math perspective, it’s better to go from 192k or 96k to 48k than it is from 44.1k to 48k. See if you observe any differences.