This cat has never stepped foot outside. She sits in the window waiting for a bird and sometimes I wonder what would she ever do if she actually caught one. For me, the discussion around high sample rates is sort of the same.
High sample rates are designed to capture frequencies that you can’t really hear. And over the years my thinking about sample rates has evolved. First, a little background.
Sample rate defines the highest pitch that we can record. Human hearing tops out around 20,000 cycles per second. To capture that we use a sample rate of 44.1.
I have another post about this already. We also see this sample rate of 48k in film and TV. Musically, it’s practically the same note.
The argument for 48k is more about film placement than it is about sound quality. People will debate me on this. That’s fine.
I’ve heard the arguments. I’m just not that interested. I have similar feelings about really high sample rates.
Sort of. Take the highest note that you can hear and imagine one octave above it. That’s the difference between 48k and 96k.
At high sample rates, you need twice the storage space, double the computer bandwidth, and you only get half the track count. So the question is this. Is there a bird in those upper frequencies?
And if so, what the heck are we going to do with it if we catch it? My production style skews more towards mad scientists. And so one thing you’ll find me doing a lot is pitching material down.
Metallic sounds, bell tones, anything with lots of upper harmonics start to sound pretty interesting as they slow down. Capturing those ultrasonic frequencies can yield neat results when they end up in the audible range. There’s a lot of snake oil and hype surrounding the sample rate.
To me, it only starts getting interesting once you can hear it.
