Re: Purchasing a DAW. Do I really need a higher sampling rate than 44.1 kHz?


PhobikONE wrote:

Why else would EVERY MAJOR STUDIO work on CD albums @ 24 bits?

The main reason is availability (which is the first sign of
obsolescence). Today, other than a crappy built-in sound card, you
can't buy an A/D converter than doesnt put out a 24-bit word.

If there's a word length switch at all, how it sounds at 16 bits
depends more on how the word length gets shortened than then actual
word lenght. After all, it was originally converted with a 24-bit
converter. If the 24-bit word is simply truncated to get a 16-bit
output, it will have certain forms of distortion that are
characteristic of truncation. If it's dithered before truncation, then
it will have an increase in noise due to the dither (which may be
audible, depending on the flavor of the dithering) and it may have some
other kind of artifacts that are related to the type of dither and how
it interacts with the program material. So even with the same
converter, you can't really compare 16-bit and 24-bit performance and
isolate what you hear different to being a function of only the shorter
word length.

The simple answer to your question is that the 24-bit version will
invariably sound better than a 16-bit from the same converter. In the
studio, there's no need to convert to 16 bits. That's done, where
necessary, in mastering, where you can take as much care as you want to
pay for to find the optimum way to get the recording on to a 16-bit CD.


In the studio, we often make reference CDs or even DAT backups, and for
those, we're not as careful about how we shorten the word length.

So I can't hear above 20 khz, does that mean sound ceases to exist
after that? Hell no, just cuz we don't hear it, doesn't mean it
doesn't effect the sound we do here. Ever hear of harmonics?

You don't want to hear harmonics that are generated in the system.
There's no queston that musical instruments produce frequencies higher
than 20 kHz, and there's some studies that suggeest that while our ears
don't directly respond to those frequencies, they may affect how we
hear other things. But this hasn't been proven conclusively yet. One
problem is that tranducers aren't that good yet, primarily because
there just aren't that many that have been designed to respond to
frequencies above the audio range. There are a few mics that have
usable response up to 50 kHz or so, and there are tweeters that claim
response up to 30 kHz or so. So unless you include components like
those in your system, you really aren't testing anything up in that
range.

right there is a major benefit.

Well, maybe a minor benefit to some.

.

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