I've got some files that are WMA 16khz, 16kbps, Mono. I am transcoding them into MP3 and putting them on the empeg.

I'm increasing the bitrate to 96khz to try to help cover the fact that I'm re-encoding something that's already been lossy encoded. However, I am leaving the samplerate at 16khz and the channels at Mono, in an effort to prevent inducing artifacts from sample rate conversion.

My question is, will the empeg's DSP play 16khz mono by default, or does the player software do a sample rate conversion on-the-fly? Perhaps I could actually get better quality by doing the sample rate conversion ahead of time. I've noticed the resulting files sound a bit harsh and edgy on the empeg, and I'm wondering of that's an artifact of the player doing a quick-and-dirty samplerate conversion as opposed to something nicer.

Any comments from the gang?

If the DSP is the same as in the Karma, I read either here or at riovolution that the karma resamples everything to 41kHz on the fly.

--Nathan

The DSP is a different one than on the Karma, unfortunately.

Come on Tony, just pay for the CD. j/k

The DSP will only play 44.1KHz samples. Whether the player software will convert on the fly or fails to play it remains to be seen.

http://sox.sourceforge.net/

The empeg does play it, I just notice a harshness to the playback which might be the player software's samplerate conversion algorithm. So I guess it's worth my time to experiment with other ways of samplerate converting as part of the transcoding process to see if I can improve things.

My dvd ripped ogg files at 48kHz (16 bit, 2 channel) play, and I haven't noticed any obvious distortion or other audio weirdness, not that I have great ears but anyway.

SSRC seems to be the dominant non-propritary resampler, and has been incorporated into many of the audio programs out there.

--Nathan

Thank you for that link to SSRC. It could end up being very helpful.