For the listener who cannot hear signals above 20kHz it may be argued that antiimage
filters for DACs operating with an input sample rate of 44.1kHz are not
required. All images will be above 22.05kHz and inaudible. (This case may be
argued even more strongly for 96kHz systems, when images are more than an
octave higher.)
Such arguments ignore the potential for non-linear behaviour in the electronic and
electromechanical stages following the DAC in the signal path. This non-linearity will
cause high frequency images above the audio band to intermodulate with signals
within the audio band. This would produce audio band intermodulation distortion
artefacts that could fall in the band.
For example, consider the half-band interpolation filter shown in figure 2.
Take, for an extreme example, a full scale input signal of 1kHz below the half sample
frequency. The image of this tone (to be suppressed by this filter) will be at 1kHz
above the half sample frequency, and at full scale. The filter attenuation at that
frequency is 25dB.
The output of the DAC following this filter will therefore have two tones 2kHz apart.
A second-order non-linearity in an amplifier or loudspeaker would produce
intermodulation products at the frequency sum and frequency difference of these
tones. The amplitude of the products would be equivalent to the product of the two
amplitudes multiplied by the coefficient of non-linearity.
If the second order non-linearity in the following stages (amplifiers and loudspeakers)
is worse than 1% at that frequency and level then the resulting distortion product at
2kHz will be approximately -70dB below the signal. Do not forget that - for our
listener at least - the signal itself is inaudible and will not have any masking effect.
Few people would choose to listen to this signal. It merely illustrates how the image
rejection performance of an