Freesound Forums

Hello
I read lots of posts and half of people claim that it's absolutely important to have those extra inaudible frequencies, some people won't even look at audio lower than 96khz (which sounds kinda stupid), they also comparing it with high resolution images (which is nonsense, comparing it with 60 vs 120 fps video is much closer, but even this not accurately), the other half says that we don't need such audio, because we can perfectly recreate every frequency below Nyquist, so there's no sense to record higher than 48khz, it weight a lot and benefits are way too unobvious.

So. I'm asking because my recorder can record up to 192khz, but audio samples weight a lot, and my storage pretty limited, and I'm concerned about people who don't even look at "low" sample rate audio samples, that I will record bunch of audio, but no one will need it because 48khz is "too low". Do you really need such high sample rate audio? How do you benefit from it? It's about processing, time stretching or something else? I tried to compare results of time stretching and squashing of 192 and 44 khz audio samples, with preserving pitch and not, and I failed to spot any difference at all

P.S. I'm new on professional audio recording, so there's lot of things that I still don't know

See, that's a great question.

Let me start with sound sampling.
There are two different elements that are important, namely;
1] The bit rate 16, 24 or 32 bit.
2] The sampling frequency, for example 41.1, 48 or 192 kHz.

1] This is about the dynamic range of the sound. The higher the number, the more difference there can be between the loud and soft sounds you record. For example with a classical orchestra.

2] This is about the frequency that can be recorded. If the sampling frequency is 48 kHz then roughly a sound of about 24 kHz can be recorded.

If you are going to make samples to sell, for example, the end result 24/48 is sufficient. However, to create and edit beautiful samples it is wise to record in the highest possible quality. So 24 (bit) / 192 (kHz) as a basis for editing is not at all exaggerated.

To test the difference in the final result you can do the following;

a] You record a sound in 24/192 wav.
Just turn it into a 56 bit mp3 (does freesound even if you listen to an example).
b] You now record the same sound in 16 / 44.1 kHz and you make a 56 bit mp3 from that too.

You can really hear that difference. The end result of a is better than b, because the start was better.

Try experimenting with it yourself.

ps I (almost) always use 24/96 as the starting point for my shots.

A good question from Lemenus and a good answer from klankbeeld.

I've been a part of several shootouts/ blind "taste tests" of different converters at different sample rates recording the same sounds. This is what I have learned: different things sound better and certain rates through certain converters, and everything sounds perfectly fine at 48kHz/24 bit when recorded through a modern converter.

Do try several tests, and also send files to a trusted colleague and get some feedback on your sounds at different sample rates. The results are always very interesting!

I never use 192000 hz mostly because of size and because I upload alot, and also because I can't hear a difference.
Is there a difference between recording at that higher amount of Hertz and simply converting it to a higher hertz, I believe so. I ran a test.

This sound is at 192000 hz converted from 48000 hz.
https://freesound.org/people/Erokia/sounds/560372/

And this sound is the original recording.
https://freesound.org/people/Erokia/sounds/560373/

The spectral graph of the sound is less pronounced to the original and some of the higher pitch notes seem less noticeable, might just be me.
Also the size of the sounds tripled, doesn't make it ideal for uploading to freesound for me.
But for someone recording straight at the that hertz may make a big difference depending on what they are recording.. ahem... like ghosts or something

Besides recording, there's also how some tools and plugins work inside the DAW. Some are compatible for 192khz or higher and others have a lower value. This is helpful in order to avoid a thing called aliasing. Basically adding some "bad" harmonics to the sound. This can be prevented by something called oversampling. Which means that the plugin will work at higher sample rates than the ones on the project.

Recording and working at 192khz it will sound different than only recording at 192khz and working at 96khz, even if in the end they're both 48khz.

Is the difference big enough? There's a difference in the sound but it won't be that big.

In the end higher sample rates allow a more "truthful" representation of the audio waves but like Erokia pointed out, sometimes it's not that useful.

Personally I like to work at 96khz but even recently I read that one of the most grammy awarded pop mixing engineers works at 48khz.

Usually it depends on the domain you're working on. Film, Jazz and also classical are a more "Hi-Fi" domain, so they tend to use higher samples to maintain the fidelity.