Sample rate

The basics of digital audio production

Category:

Music

Tags:

• hertz
• frequency
• response
• digital
• audio
• production
• phase
• sound
• dynamic
• range
• sample
• rate

[bbrriiaann9922]

44.1kHz - 4:52; 22kHz - 5:17; 8kHz - 5:37

[tamcocbichdong]

great video. thanks very much. and this man also sounds like ferris bueller which is mint.

[MimicIsaac]

Fantastic



[DJEvsE]

I'm curious why THIS vid is available on max 360p and not in hd... :p

[DJPeteJames]

Quite like the 8Khz - must experiment with a bit of that on some samples!

[middleeaster]

Nice :) Thanks

[metalgear11111]

Good converters should have indistinguishable quality between sample rates at or above 44.1 KHz. Bit depth, on the other hand, does contribute to sound quality because the higher it is the lower the noise floor becomes (up to a point determined by the analog components of the converters of course). Higher bit depths also provide more dynamic steps to our music so we can capture more subtleties that were not possible (or hard to achieve) in 16 bit recording. But that's another story. Good Luck

[metalgear11111]

Pay attention to the high frequencies on each example. The lower the sample rate the less high frequencies you capture, and thus it sounds lo-fi. But the lows are still there.  Once you go over the highest frequency we can hear (~20 KHz), everything else is moot because we can't hear it (unless you're making music for dolphins that is).

Now, if you do hear a difference between 44.1 KHz and higher sampling rates then it's due to low quality converters (i.e. jitter, bad filters, etc).

[metalgear11111]

The human ear has an average range from 20Hz - 20KHz, so anything above/below this range is moot since we can't hear it. IOW, sampling at 44.1 KHz covers all the frequencies below 22.05 KHz, which is above our hearing range, and is thus sufficient for humans. Those examples you provide (a recording sampled at 22 KHz and then at 8 KHz) will not sound as good because you're limiting the bandwith and taking information we CAN hear out of the recordings.

[metalgear11111]

Everything sounds good except for the part where you say that "Higher sample rates = greater accuracy" which "means better digital representation". This is obviously wrong if you look at what the Nyquist--Shannon Theorem says: "An analog signal waveform may be uniquely reconstructed, WITHOUT ERROR, from samples taken at equal time intervals. THE SAMPLING RATE MUST BE EQUAL TO, OR GREATER THAN, TWICE THE HIGHEST FREQUENCY COMPONENT IN THE ANALOG SIGNAL."