I disagree on a few things. Or let me redefine the framework. And get some definitions straight. Broaden the horizon so to say.
I learned a lot in school, but what I learned best is that most teachers have no idea what they are teaching you. Besides the language and math you get indoctrinated with a LOT of ideology. One of the Fairy Tales is that by learning you will be introduced into the elite club of Reasonable Men, devoid of alterior motives or emotion. They say "Trust the SCIENCE". And with that you are an acolyte in the new religion of Scientism. Which has its own dogmas, gods and priests. Modern science as it is discribed has very little to do with the pursuit of knowledge but a lot more with establishing consensus. Denying their own foundation in 1 particular religion or worldview. That the universe can be studied and abides to common laws. Laws that apply always and everywhere the same. Without that faith there is no workable scientific method. So much for "science as opposing to "religion". They MUST go hand in hand.
The thing I would like to pull apart here is timing. I was talking about sound. Not timing of digital signals. Analog sound as perceived with or sense of hearing and the brain as processor of that digital input rendered by the synapses. Yes, our eyes and ears are biological digital sensors. Lots and lots of computing going on in that grey matter between our ears.
But here is my point: over 90% is not conscious. Like in a computer most things are machine instructions (lower level language) that are not visible for the user on a UI (user interface). Yet errors can very much throw a spanner in the works. Most of our hearing is subconscious. Just put one finger in your ear and notice how your 3D perception is totally distroyed. That is the same as having a hearing aid: you can't follow a conversation in a crowd because you can't locate anymore on timing differences between 2 ears. And thus you can't focus on one location you are listening to.
Back to my 2 dimensions of sound: amplitude and timing. And information and noise. Noise in amplitude is simply called noise. And you know instantly what I mean, signal to noise. That reduces the amount of information. When a sound is twice as loud as a similar sound or overtone, that's 10dB difference, the lower sound is masked. Yet when there is noise from everywhere you can still perceive 1 signal if it's 40dB (iirc that is) below the noise floor. Like a voice in the crowd. That is pretty amazing, 10⁴ difference in volume.
That is also due to timing. But what if that voice in the crowd is like 4 voices saying the same thing? Or 10? That's not so easy anymore. Heck, it's hard to understand a choir singing the same song even when the background is quiet. And how irritating is it when one eager beaver is starting to sing just ahead of the rest because he has a bad sense of timing?
Back to those 4 voices in the crowd. You can't focus on 1 pinpoint anymore. It's turned into an area, a wider spot with differences in timing and amplitude. That is noise in the timedomain.
But what to call noise in the timedomain? Distortion? Smearing? Confusing? Quantum physics? It is confusing. And most often it's not even consciously. It seems that people can believe 2 conflicting statements as true at the same time. That's called cognitive dissonance and you can often tell because they fall flat, their brain goes on tilt when asked about one or the other. It also causes headaches and irrational behaviour. That's all unconscious. The brain can't produce 1 clear conscious answer. Try and scientifically study that! You'll get a different answer every time. Like Schrödingers cat.
Besides the tangents, timing of sound is much more important than we think, because it's in our subconscious non-think area. It's the iceberg we can't see.
Finally, on NOS and oversampling.
NOS doesn't cause HF roll-off, it's the filtering that does. It's the pre- and post ringing that makes the HF sound clearer (in other words its artificial detail). Oversampling causes pre-ringing. That like the arithmic singer in the choir. A pond never starts to ripple before the stone hits the surface. That causes our brain to come up with an explanation from the natural world that makes the impossible possible. Result: brain freeze, cognitive dissonance, headache, listening fatigue... Post-ringing is much less of a problem as is is much like physical resonance, reverberation and harmonics.
And now my sense of timing tells me I've ranted for far too long.
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