@PonZo said:

In other words, is it possible to design an abstraction to place before all DACs so that one does not have to worry about aliasing?

No. If that were the case, it would probably be a vanilla object by now, because everyone would want it. The best you can do is to make sure you don't alias to begin with.

One more thing. Using a LPF by itself often is not enough, you have to do so in an upsampled block. Check out the original article.

http://en.flossmanuals.net/PureData/Antialiasing

Thanks, it hadn't occurred to me that the aliasing was present in the data itself, before DAC, but that makes sense because the data is also limited to the sample rate, duh.

What a pain, it really makes me wish I could afford more outboard gear, and now that I understand the perils I'll be listening carefully for any dirty harmonics. With the amount of synthesis that I need I feel that the upsampling is not practical.

Good one, Maelstorm, I imagine it would be built into the DAC object if it were possible!