You will notice that plugins especially reverbs and synths with sound with more clairity and precision as you raise bitrate and samplerate. Dithering from say 24/96 to 16/44.1 will sound better than rendering in just 16/44.1

Also many DAWs not let you edit sample's bitrate/samplerate now and re-save them. I know Cubase does in the Pool feature and FLStudio 7 does with the Edison sample editor. Not so sure about other programs.

quote:

Originally posted by Johnny Cache I don´t hear it. My co-workers didn´t hear it. So we went back to 44.1 / 24 or 48 for movie-related stuff maybe if you do a lot of classical music recordings, you might be able to tell the difference. but not with popular music, especially not in techno. everything is so compressed, nothing left to sample

Actually, classical music is one type of music where a lower sample rate would be least noticeable, as it generally has a pretty "dark" spectrum, i.e. the instruments used most often don't generate a large amount of very high frequencies.

A reduction in sample rate is most noticeable in genres that really try to "fill the spectrum" and use lots of high-frequency percussion or aggressive drumming, like much of dance music and the louder types of pop and rock.

quote:

Originally posted by thecYrus actually there is a hearable difference when you work with higher resolution and dither it down to 44,1/16...

Personally I don't think it's worth the CPU hit.
Any synth worth having will already have sufficient oversampling within the synth engine.

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Actually, classical music is one type of music where a lower sample rate would be least noticeable, as it generally has a pretty "dark" spectrum, i.e. the instruments used most often don't generate a large amount of very high frequencies.

This is just plain untrue. Especially classical instruments have a certain amount of high frequencies that are a crucial part of their sound. Have you ever heard a group of strings live? Noticed the "air" they have to their sound? That is what people try to capture by raising sample rates.

Indeed there are some sorts of sounds in electronic music (especially trance) that feature a lot of high frequencies. (I´m sure you know how substractive synthesis works) This would lead to using a higher sample rate. The problem here is that most software instruments still work in 16 Bit / 44.1 kHz and just upsample the sounds to the higher sampling rate. Of course, not all softsynths work this way, NI for example support the higher bitrates

I have dealed with this problem for quite a long time and after a lot of listening and consideration I decided to stick with 44.1 / 16 for electronic music, 44.1 and 24 for recording (I would record synths in 25 Bits, also)...and 48 kHz for film

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Agenda 2009:

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disk space is so cheap... nominal difference or not, who cares -- wouldn't you want the BEST quality ALL the time for your music? i think everyone will switch over once CD's are no longer the medium used for music...

I see this very often in jazz releases. I don't think it really makes a difference with electronic music though. The sounds are already artificial, so who's to say what it's 'supposed' to sound like? Personally I've always used 16bit and I can't really see the point in switching to 24.

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I think this is more a matter of belief than really of a difference in quality of the production, or the music.
Most people should first improve their mixing before dealing with thinks like this...

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"nee, de plaat heeft geen kras! dat hoort zo!!!"

Agenda 2009:

WinterWorld, Sporthalle Oberwerth, Koblenz
Trance Energy, Jaarbeurs Utrecht
Mayday, Westfalenhallen, Dortmund
Nature One, Pydna, Kastellaun / Hunsrück

Oh yeah, recording in 96kHz (assuming your target is CD) actually degrades your sound when it is downsampled, because 96khz doesn't divide evenly to 44.1 kHz. The audio has to be re-interpolated, which introduces artifacts.
You're much better off recording it in 88.2kHz since dividing it in two will yield 44.1kHz.

quote:

Originally posted by Johnny Cache This is just plain untrue. Especially classical instruments have a certain amount of high frequencies that are a crucial part of their sound. Have you ever heard a group of strings live? Noticed the "air" they have to their sound? That is what people try to capture by raising sample rates.

Look at the frequency plot of a violin section playing. Yeah, it has some frequencies in the upper range, but not nearly the amount of even a very standard pop or trance song. The main reason that classical performances were some of the first to be offered on SACD and other fancy formats is because the demographic that listens to / buys such performances is particularly wealthy and contains a larger portion of audiophile wanks compared to the demographic for other kinds of music, not because classical music uses more high frequencies than other genres.

[And I love classical music, by the way.]

no, the usage of high def. audio formats was not only due to the fact that the average listener of classical music is wealthier..
there is a difference in sound of a recorded sound when sampled at a higher sampling rate, no doubt. but when it comes to synthesizers and other DIGITAL sound generators, I think that this difference is less notable....

you see, the only reasion that tape machines are still used is that they record analog and that an analog recording still has a certain way of character to it that can never be achieved by digital recorders.
i would always prefer to record through an analog console onto an analoge tape machine but as long as I use software sound generators I don´t care about those facts. It´s all digital in the end

furthermore the amount of compression used in dance music is another fact that should be taken into account. most percussive elements are smothened, transients are reduced by the heavy compression that is applied in mastering....

___________________
"nee, de plaat heeft geen kras! dat hoort zo!!!"

Agenda 2009:

WinterWorld, Sporthalle Oberwerth, Koblenz
Trance Energy, Jaarbeurs Utrecht
Mayday, Westfalenhallen, Dortmund
Nature One, Pydna, Kastellaun / Hunsrück

Last edited by Johnny Cache on Feb-08-2008 at 20:57

the higher bitrate you can work with/afford, the better. as with the hz rating. a 96khz wav will offer a lot bigger headroom and allow a bigger bandwidth. if you can give suitable files to a mastering suite who work with 24bit 96khz, then do it. there is obviously a reason that the boffins created this bitrate.

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