what sample rate do you record at… and why?

CD (WAV) audio uses a 44.1khz rate. This makes it possible to make a tone as high as 22.05 khz. Our hearing range goes up to 20 khz, and most people can’t even hear that, so 44.1khz is really all you need. If you use a 96khz or 192khz sampling rate, you will better resolution in the high end, but not actual higher tones. In the end, no matter what sampling rate you record in, it always ends up at 44.1khz on a CD.

And so, I use 44.1khz. I never really found a great reason to go any higher. It just never made sense to me why something that’s going to end up at 44.1k anyway would be recorded any higher. I know there’re high math principles about this that make things sound better, but I’ve never heard enough of a sound quality difference to give up half my processing power and make the audio take up double the space.

But THIS is interesting: While we can’t hear sine waves above 20kHz, this scientist would play a sine wave 10khz, then play a square wave at 10khz. They clearly sounded different. The way you make a 10k square wave is by adding a 30k sine wave on top of it. However, the 30k sine wave is inaudible to the human ear. THIS means that while there are tones we can’t hear, they may still effect the texture of sounds lower in pitch.

Word is bond.

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1. uncommonguitar reblogged this from danromer and added:

   this one completely....annoying when people send...tracks at...

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