Methods and apparatus are described herein that make use of complex tuning, the inherently repetitive nature of sampled signals, and programmable digital filtering to create a flexible digital up-conversion system that utilizes a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) with a fixed effective sample rate while still being adapted for tunability over a wide frequency range. With a knowledge of the fixed effective sample rate of the DAC and a desired frequency of up-conversion and combining complex tuning at baseband and up-sampling by a factor of N with a programmable passband filter configured to select one of a plurality of signal images resulting from the up-sampling, it is possible to translate a baseband input signal to a wide range of frequencies above or below Fs, without changing the sampling rate of the fixed rate DAC used in the up-conversion process.