Difference in tone quality and feel with higher sample rate
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Tonight I was looking into the difference between 44.1 and 48khz, and I swear the sound and feel are different, the latter seeming fuller and more responsive. Has anyone experienced this?
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hmm since in theory human's ears have a frequency response range from 20hz to 20khz, being able to ear a difference between 44.1 and 48khz makes me think you should be an alien or something like that :D...are you???!
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@salvatore-di-piazza haha! He is talking about recording sample rate. How many samples a second are captured. I've never been able to hear and audible difference between 44.1 and 48k, because they are so close, but I could definitely hear a difference between 44.1 and 88.2 for instance. Specifically on things like cymbal decay. I have never experimented with sessions at 48k because I always record at 88.2.
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The big one on the plus side are that theoretically, you can halve the latency by doubling the sample rate, the other is that the ALL important high pass filter has way more room to work, theoretically giving you some improved anti-aliasing performance in the non linear processes that these distortion generators are at their heart...In the real world though, I made this video to test oversampling on non linear issues, specifically because I saw a video about BIAS and the guy talking about aliasing issues in it.
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@tannhauser FWIW, I always play/record @48KHz
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I've always been told that usually 44.1 is used for music and 48 for cinema audio.
You may use 88.2 and 96 if you're using outboard fx's and want to compensate for any signal losses.. at the end of the day the standard quality audio is 44.1 on a CD -
@salvatore-di-piazza Yes, IIRC, that is true with regard to video vs CD default rates,. I seem to remember it being done like that to make it difficult to convert/copy stuff... yay DRM! :angry:
My AxeFxII is 48KHz by default, though, so I always run all my stuff @ that rate to be compatible with it. Consistency helps since sample rate conversion in audio can affect sound quality, so I'd say pick a rate and stick with it. The extra processing and storage requirements are probably not super valuable for home (and maybe even semi-pro) studio use. CDs certainly fall within my entire hearing range. :smile:
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@Salvatore-Di-Piazza : hehn, I sometimes wonder. Especially since my music education, wherein my ear dramatically changed, I've been far more aware of the harmonics in a sound. I've found a great number of people, especially civilians, don't hear the subtleties in an acoustic instrument performance, I think mostly because they haven't had the same training experience.
An electric guitar stem is a very small tone. Run through an amplifier may have the quantum equivalent of a pre-q. Since my gain tone is hot enough to crank, but just light enough for real dynamics, this effect may be more apparent. Aliasing may explain its existence.
My perception can go a few ways. Sometimes I can't stand any kind of clipped signal tone. On the other hand, I can hear things in a person's voice that tell me about them and the experience they're having (wink wink), whereas most cannot.
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the 44 vs 48 thing is a discussion, we as an industry increasingly need to have once and for all. Optimizing the different sizes for different delivery medium leads to all sorts of erros, confusions and real trouble when it comes to showtime....How many times has the SRC instead of retagging the audio to be dealt with, played the pitch higher or slower to brute force it for instance?
It used to seem simple enough: 44k for the CD, 48 k for the film. But so many mp3s were made from 48k videos, and so many also from 44k cd's, the codecs seemed to treat the two very different
How important are CD's anymore anyway? Why should a CD be at 44k?
Backwards compatibility? We now have CD players that can play mp3's, wavs, whatever, they should detect the sample rate and work accordingly
48k gives us another 2k or anti aliasing filter room. (Try and put a parametric eq on a guitar track and make the Q or bandwidth as steep as you possibly can, and listen to what craziness that does to your sound.) RIght now, we are trying to fit the entire low pass filter in just over 2khz of space.
ALl that said, so much of my stuff is optimized at 44khz so thats where I tend to run it, but give us a real standard and I'm super happy to jump ship!
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@pipelineaudio : I haven't used 'classical' media since the early 00s. That people still want to 'buy a CD' is almost....appalling. (Yes I think homeboy in Guardians of the Galaxy is a dweeb for nostalging on cassette tapes - FFS......but then I've watched such things to see how dumb Fantasy is getting....a study of Culture.) In any case, such standardisation as you desire and suggest is anathema to Capitalism. To our fortune, the development of technology has that institution in cardiac arrest, something more affording rising to light.