Wondering if any savvy folks out there can answer a question about oversampling. This subject can be a bag of worms, so hopefully we can stay on track with the specific question (please). Audio interfaces allow us to set our inputs and outputs at bit rates much higher than your average 44.1khz file. Forgetting for the moment any discussion of recording in, or of upsampling processes used in mastering, are there any benefits to upsampling a 44.1k file at the interface's DAC output, say to 96k, during pure playback? IE, if a channel is being routed from Live or Traktor containing natively 44.1k material, does it make any sense at all to have the interface set to 96k?
I'm up to speed with the Nyquist theory and the theory of "no new data created where there wasn't data before", but what is the story behind the internal data handling of the two programs I mentioned? I'm under the impression that with the exception of various plug-ins, these programs handle data at the rate it was natively introduced, and only the DAC in the interface upsamples (at the output), if it is set at a higher rate than the original material. I'm looking for documentation that says "Traktor/Live processes audio internally at "X" khz, but I'm not seeing that.
Or if you have your interface set to a higher sampling rate, and process 44.1k audio, is the upsampling applied to the signal before it goes to the outputs? (In which case it makes sense to set your interface to a higher rate - as in with mastering theory where most experts agree that the upsampling during processing can help smooth the data before it's dropped back to 44.1 for consumption). I guess this is mostly a "what is the actual chain of events" discussion.
I'm only talking about sampling rate here, not bit rate. Thanks everyone!
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