Re: bitrate: 48khz vs 96khz vs higher


F wrote:

You know, I just arrived from attending to a recording school, and they
told me that the standard for recording in digitally was 48k, and that
44.1k (that was the standard some time ago) does not sound so good
because it was not able to capture some extra frequency ranges that
gave the notes some extra harmonics...

I hope you didn't pay much to attend that school. It used to be that
some DAT recorders sounded a little better at 48 kHz than at 44.1 kHz
because of the type of filters used in the A/D and D/A converters, but
with modern oversampling converters, the difference is so small as to
be negligable. However the audio and video industries eveolved their
standards of sample rate differently. The "low speed" standard for
audio is 44.1 kHz because that's the CD standard. The "low speed"
standard in the video industry is 48 kHz because that's what they
always used.

So if you're working with audio for CD, better to use 44.1 kHz than to
convert from 48 kHz. If you're working with audio for video however,
better to use 48 kHz becaue if you give them 44.1 kHz, they'll convert
it.

As far as 96 kHz goes, (and this is the "high speed" standard for audio
rather than 88.2 kHz, because it's most often delivered to the consumer
on DVD) there are some small advantages if the material contains some
frequencies above the normal audio range. A good example is if you're
going to be restoring 78 RPM records and there are pops (there are
always pops) which didn't get there by coming in through a microphone.
Those might contain some energy above 25 kHz. If you preserve them
accurately, you can make better use of the cleanup tools available -
sometimes.

My rule of thumb is to use what the client asks for or the industry
standard calls for. For general purpose audio recordings where I have
control, I use 44.1 kHz and save the disk space.

How can you know the quality of a digital converter?, just by
"hearing
the difference" or theres a way to actually test it. (maybe with an
oscilloscope, or with other method..).

Pretty much by listening. The numbers for the things that we know how
to measure are so small on all but really bad converters these days
that you really can't tell them apart by looking at test data. It's not
that there aren't measurable differences, we just don't know how to
measure them.

.

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