48 kHz vs. 44.1 kHz (1 Viewer)

[shujaatkhan]

Hello all....
I basically have two sources for audio, one is of course a regular cd player (used only as transport) and the other is a 30 GB hard drive that stores CD ripped into WAV files (NOT MP3's). The DAC being used is the receiver's (Sony DB-930). Both are digital connections (toslink and SP/DIF respectively)
When listening thru the PC's HD, the display on the receiver shows "48 kHz" and when listening thru the CD player its shows "44.1 kHz".
My question is...what the difference between the two??
Is any signal being degraded by the 48 kHz rate?
To my ears, the very subtle but noticeable difference is that the cd player is brighter compared to the wav files.
Can any one signal source be regarded as superior or better??
TIA
ps. If you're not familiar with "wav"....its not compressed, its the same as a CD, but on a computer.

 

[Selden Ball]

One of three things is happening:
1) The PC's digital output is running almost 10% fast and should sound brighter than the CD and finish sooner, or
2) your ripping software resampled the digital input, writing more samples per second to the WAV file on disk, or
3) your audio card or player is resampling the WAV file on output.
Any of these would explain why you hear a difference. Personally, I would consider any modification of the original CD's data to be suspect, although it's not necessarily worse.
You might want to search the Web for information about your audio card and your ripping software. I seem to recall that some cards do automatic resampling in the hardware. There are utilities which can tell you details about what's in the WAV file itself.
I hope this helps a little.
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Selden
[Edited last by Selden Ball on October 28, 2001 at 10:33 AM]

 

[shujaatkhan]

Thanks for the reply.
I looked up the info, its the soundcard thats doing the resampling to 48 kHz. Is that good or bad?

 

[Selden Ball]

As I wrote previously, any resampling of the datarate has to be suspect. The results could be good, bad or indifferent, depending on the algorithm used by the card. What maufacturer/model is it?
Sorry: I really have no opinion from personal experience. The fan noise from my own PC is loud enough to mask any defects in its sound card (one of the Soundblaster Live! variants). I just use its analog stereo output plus surround sound processing in my pre/pro.
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Selden

 

[shujaatkhan]

Its a Yamaha sound card (dunno the model no). Its supposed to be a "professional" type sound card... I don't know a whole lot about its specs.
The noise from the PC is terrible on an analog connection, that's why I use the digital output (sp/dif).
Thanks for your input though.