24 bits or 96 kHz? Which makes most difference?

24 bits or 96 khz so whenever I make a video about bit depths 16 bit 24 bit 32bit there will be people in the comments saying you forgot about sampling rate but just as there seems to be a demand for videos on bit depth and believe me there is a demand I have the evidence in my YouTube statistics I think there may be just maybe a demand for videos on sampling rate here's a question did you know before you clicked that you will be interested in this video about sampling rates or does YouTube's algorithm know you better than you know yourself I suspect the latter anyway I'm here you're here so as YouTubers say let's get into it 44.1 khz one of my favorite frequencies I do have favorite frequencies and there's going to be a video on them all soon 44.1 khz may not technically be an odd number but it seems odd and why not something nicer like 40 khz or 50 not too far away and definitely nice and round commenters someone sent me a comment on nice round numbers in the dozenal system just for fun where 44.1 khz comes from is that digital audio used to be recorded on video recorders professionally the TIC format the audio went into a processor that digitized it and made it look like a video signal so the recorder was fooled standard definition video recorders in the ntfc format which was used in the land of Sony run at a frame rate of 30 frames per second and 490 active lines per frame put three samples in each line and we get three * 490 * 30 equal 44,100 okay there are complications around this and please comment your favorite complication in the comments so we're still living with this now digital workstation software presents 44.1 as being one of the two sampling rates you're most likely to choose so what's the other sampling rate you're likely to choose 48 khz and if you're watching this you already know where 48 khz comes from well the story as I heard it way back in the 1980s was that broadcasters were already using 32 khz and it was easier to convert 48 to 32 than 44.1 to 32 at least back in the olden days it says similarly on Wikipedia IA but can we trust Wikipedia for this information this would be the Wikipedia that says that 48 khz does offer slightly more Headroom for audio mixing which allows for more flexibility especially on higher frequencies which as we know is a complete load of bollocks anyway we have this choice 44.1 or 48 there really isn't any reason not to choose 48 unless you're absolutely sure that the only outlet for your work will be CD 48 khz is in fact designated as high resolution audio highr by the r AA and CA we all want re don't we and higher re clearly is better re re it could almost have been the Oxford English dictionaries word of the year now let's get into some science don't click away it's easy easy enough theory has it and practice confirms that to sample up to any particular frequency the sampling rate has to be at least twice that frequency otherwise we get aliasing which I will probably cover in a future video but rest assured it sounds bad very bad but also on digital analog conversion we have to filter out the sampling frequency so there has to be a low pass filter that lets everything below 20 khz get through and nothing at all at 44.1 or 48 khz or at least close to these requirements this is going to be a pretty steep filter and that steepness does have implications for perceived audio quality this isn't some audio files hallucination it's a real world issue I say that at my age I'm sure I can't hear it but we accept that the range of human hearing goes up to 20 khz so we would prefer in an ideal world for that 20 khz to be pure pure in frequency pure in amplitude pure in Phase here's a question clearly a filter suitable for 44.1 khz is going to need a steeper slope than for 48 khz but does your digital analog converter know about this or does it use the same filter for both thus producing suboptimal sound at 48 khz then of course there's oversampling in the digital analog converter but that's at the listeners end wouldn't you want your digital bits to be the best for all listeners 48 wins the next step after 48 khz is usually 96 khz yes I know a 88.2 but why can't we just set ourselves free from compact dis so I'll ignore this unless there's some clamoring in the comments for me to cover it in future what we get at 96 khz is the ability to capture much higher frequencies much higher than anyone can hear even Phil now there will be a debate in audio engineering circles about whether you should be capturing storing and outputting frequencies that no one will hear asking for trouble might be an appr appropriate phrase but definitely the higher sampling rate allows for a shallower filter this is a good thing now the butt doesn't there always have to be a butt 96 khz is unfortunately less practical for recording if you're recording an orchestra straight to stereo then fine go for 96 if you're recording an orchestra in multitrack so you can make your balance decisions later then fine well probably fine I've never gone over 16 tracks myself at 96 khz so I don't know what practical limits there may be with upto-date technology one thing I do know however is that 96 khz isn't so good for production like when a producer bedroom producer even records loads of synth tracks into his or her digital audio workstation software then applies multiple plugins to each track the inevitable result is that the computer's processor has to work harder and there comes a point where it just can't keep up the T ldr of this is that the higher the sampling rate the fewer tracks and less processing you can use there are workarounds but you'll probably just prefer the convenience of being able to do what you want without your computer running out of steam so this means as a producer you'll probably record in 44.1 or 48 probably almost certainly then when you mix and master your work will remain at the same sampling rate that you recorded now here's a funny thing you could record in 16 bits you wouldn't want to but you could and then when you bounce to stereo you can bounce to 24 bits and you'll get the benefit from that this is because some or most or all of your faders will be lower than zero DB thus plunging your 16-bit tracks down into 24-bit territory the digital audio workstation software can of course handle this so you could you could and I don't know whether anyone other than crazy people do this you could record at 996 khz in 16 bits so twice the sampling rate is pushing through twice the number of bits but you're saving a third of the number of bits by only using 16 you know I'm not going to try this I've I've got work to do we're up to 96 khz what lies Beyond well obviously 192 khz and of course we'll be recording fewer tracks with less processing still okay for classical music or probably any form of acoustic music that doesn't need much processing or even electronic music if you do your processing on the way in or print your software instruments to audio tracks my view is that although 48 khz is enough for most people and it's enough for me but as I often find myself saying it's only just good enough for me personally I doubt if I'll ever actually hear and perceive the benefits of 96 khz but I want it and if I knew I wouldn't need many tracks for my project then I'd use it but 192 khz surely this is madness well not really if I say that 48 khz is good enough for me but I prefer 96 to really be sure what about an audio file I'm a mere Enthusiast I accept that there may be some people who genuinely can hear the difference between 48 and 96 so by the same logic they should want 192 if they can get it as for the next step which reach you for my calculator now is 384 khz come on now it's getting silly but there's one more sampling rate I need to cover 28224 khz that's 2.8 megahertz wow we've skipped a few Beyond 348 yes I'm sure that you know this is direct stream digital DSD as used in the sacd format super audio CD it isn't Overkill it's just a different way of encoding audio digitally pulse density modulation as opposed to the pulse code modulation we normally use and the amazingly High sampling rate is compensated for by an amazingly low bit depth one bit yes compared to the 16 bits of CD or 24 bits of professional audio and high quality downloads sacd only uses one bit one one or zero on or off I really don't know what audio files make of this but if I were an audio file I'd surely be wondering whether something wasn't quite right but the numbers don't lie dynamic range of 120 DB and a frequency response up to 100 khz of which about 50 khz is possible in practice and what comes out of your player may have little or nothing above 20 khz and to that point a respected classical music engineer of my acquaintance said to me in as close a quote as I can remember above 20 khz it's just noise but 20 khz that's fine so there we have it the perfect sampling rate is 96 Kilz according to me but until Perfection is attainable I'll be sticking with 44.1 or 48 what about you see you soon hi I'm Phil audio Phil I have a system that runs at 88.2 khz in my walk-in wardrobe I buy two copies of each CD and run one through an 11.3 microsc delay thus producing a data stream that has twice the resolution I listen when I'm getting ready to go out in my double denim tuxedo

Channel: Audio Masterclass

Views: 70,802

Keywords:

Id: UBKJCx6UJoM

Length: 11min 24sec (684 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 06 2023