Is anyone still working at the 44.1khz sample rate?

[eXode]

Now that Apple Music supports hi-res lossless audio and Spotify will follow soon. Although Youtube still recommend 44.1. What sampling rate are you guys running your DAW sessions in?

It's important to remember that there are two different aspects to this – processing vs listening.

It's one thing to work at a higher sample rate because some plugins require it, due to aliasing etc. If the situation requires it I would process and mix down, or render, at a higher sample rate and then resample to CD or DAT quality.

For listening, anything higher than CD or DAT quality is just a waste of space and bandwidth and a bit of a sham, in my humble opinion.

I still work at 44.1 kHz.

[miscend]

I'm gonna share this last comment here in this thread, then I'm out of the discussion, because honestly I hate this topic. Feel free to comment or disagree with me, but I won't reply. My mind is already made up about this.

I couldn't care less about the science, logic or explanations behind all this sample rate crap. Most people say sample rates doesn't make an audible difference. For me it does. Maybe it's the way the plugins process shit, or the way Reason handle things, or maybe my sound card does something weird. I don't know and I don't care. All I know is when I bounce or play my music in Reason at different sample rates, there can SOMETIMES be audible differences.

Here's a snippet of a track I'm working on.
For me the 96000 Hz version has a fuller guitar sound, like it's got more body compared to the 44100 version. (The "guitar" is a processed synth btw, so it's not a recorded sound).
I mean listen to the difference in the guitar tone at 0:22 between the 44100 and 96000 version. To me it sounds like it's mixed differently. And it's not that particularly subtle either. The 96000 guitar tone sounds more powerful imo.
The 44100 version has a brighter sound on hihats and cymbals. To me that's pretty clear. It's a got some sort of sizzle sound on the hihats that I don't like, like it's not processed in a natural way.
The 88200 doesn't have that annoying sizzle that 44100 has. 88200 Hihats and cymbals are just a tiny bit brighter compared to 96000 version. It almost feels like the 96000 has the hihats turned down slightly in the mix compared to the other two.

So anyway I know people will claim that it doesn't matter. I typically go for 96000 Hz myself, beacuse I usually find it less harsh sounding. But for this track I might actually prefer the 88200 version.

What synths are you processing? If you're using some of the older synths like Subtractor, they will have less aliasing at sample rates higher than 44.1 because they dont internally oversample. Distortion plugins will also benefit from reduced aliasing if they dont have built in oversampling.

[miscend]

Now that Apple Music supports hi-res lossless audio and Spotify will follow soon. Although Youtube still recommend 44.1. What sampling rate are you guys running your DAW sessions in?

It's important to remember that there are two different aspects to this – processing vs listening.

It's one thing to work at a higher sample rate because some plugins require it, due to aliasing etc. If the situation requires it I would process and mix down, or render, at a higher sample rate and then resample to CD or DAT quality.

For listening, anything higher than CD or DAT quality is just a waste of space and bandwidth and a bit of a sham, in my humble opinion.

I still work at 44.1 kHz.

For music fans and consumers simply upsampling 16/44 master recordings to 24/192 for distribution will be very disingenuous. They expect that the music was both recorded and processed at a higher fidelity. I think with Apple Music and Tidal streaming at 24-bit/96 kHz there's a chance that hi-res audio will become the norm in the not too distant future.

They're also pushing Dolby Atmos/Spatial Audio for music. If that takes off they'll be some pressure for Reason to have some sort of surround mixing facilities for regular music production.

[guitfnky]

It's important to remember that there are two different aspects to this – processing vs listening.

It's one thing to work at a higher sample rate because some plugins require it, due to aliasing etc. If the situation requires it I would process and mix down, or render, at a higher sample rate and then resample to CD or DAT quality.

For listening, anything higher than CD or DAT quality is just a waste of space and bandwidth and a bit of a sham, in my humble opinion.

I still work at 44.1 kHz.

For music fans and consumers simply upsampling 16/44 master recordings to 24/192 for distribution will be very disingenuous. They expect that the music was both recorded and processed at a higher fidelity. I think with Apple Music and Tidal streaming at 24-bit/96 kHz there's a chance that hi-res audio will become the norm in the not too distant future.

and what benefit would that have for consumers? fidelity for fidelity’s sake is pointless. the only value it provides is as a marketing tool to sell things to people who don’t know there’s no audible difference.

[mtbh]

Just a curious question to those who say there is no difference: Have y'all tried recording either direct via you hi-z or with a mic at 44.1 and then recording the same thing at 96?

[guitfnky]

Just a curious question to those who say there is no difference: Have y'all tried recording either direct via you hi-z or with a mic at 44.1 and then recording the same thing at 96?

it wouldn't make any difference unless you were using a mic capable of capturing frequencies above 20khz. do you know of any consumer recording mics that even have that capability?

[eXode]

For music fans and consumers simply upsampling 16/44 master recordings to 24/192 for distribution will be very disingenuous. They expect that the music was both recorded and processed at a higher fidelity. I think with Apple Music and Tidal streaming at 24-bit/96 kHz there's a chance that hi-res audio will become the norm in the not too distant future.

They're also pushing Dolby Atmos/Spatial Audio for music. If that takes off they'll be some pressure for Reason to have some sort of surround mixing facilities for regular music production.

I didn't mean that you should upsample 16/44 master recording to 24/192 (although I would argue that the end user wouldn't hear the difference anyway). I mean that the whole 24/192 market for listening should just die out because it doesn't fill any real purpose other than wasting space and bandwidth. Humans doesn't have the hearing of dogs, or bats. There just isn't any benefit to distribute audio at that bitrate in my humble opinion.

and what benefit would that have for consumers? fidelity for fidelity’s sake is pointless. the only value it provides is as a marketing tool to sell things to people who don’t know there’s no audible difference.

+1

[TritoneAddiction]

I'm gonna share this last comment here in this thread, then I'm out of the discussion, because honestly I hate this topic. Feel free to comment or disagree with me, but I won't reply. My mind is already made up about this.

I couldn't care less about the science, logic or explanations behind all this sample rate crap. Most people say sample rates doesn't make an audible difference. For me it does. Maybe it's the way the plugins process shit, or the way Reason handle things, or maybe my sound card does something weird. I don't know and I don't care. All I know is when I bounce or play my music in Reason at different sample rates, there can SOMETIMES be audible differences.

Here's a snippet of a track I'm working on.
For me the 96000 Hz version has a fuller guitar sound, like it's got more body compared to the 44100 version. (The "guitar" is a processed synth btw, so it's not a recorded sound).
I mean listen to the difference in the guitar tone at 0:22 between the 44100 and 96000 version. To me it sounds like it's mixed differently. And it's not that particularly subtle either. The 96000 guitar tone sounds more powerful imo.
The 44100 version has a brighter sound on hihats and cymbals. To me that's pretty clear. It's a got some sort of sizzle sound on the hihats that I don't like, like it's not processed in a natural way.
The 88200 doesn't have that annoying sizzle that 44100 has. 88200 Hihats and cymbals are just a tiny bit brighter compared to 96000 version. It almost feels like the 96000 has the hihats turned down slightly in the mix compared to the other two.

So anyway I know people will claim that it doesn't matter. I typically go for 96000 Hz myself, beacuse I usually find it less harsh sounding. But for this track I might actually prefer the 88200 version.

What synths are you processing? If you're using some of the older synths like Subtractor, they will have less aliasing at sample rates higher than 44.1 because they dont internally oversample. Distortion plugins will also benefit from reduced aliasing if they dont have built in oversampling.

I'm using all kinds of synths. FM4 for the chuggy guitars. Viking 2 (leads), Subtractor (bass). But they are all processed with a bunch of stuff. Distortions, EQs, compressors etc.
But I find even samples get affected by sample rate choice. Again the hihats which comes from Reason Drum Kits doesn't sound exactly the same depending on sample rate.
Either way we're gonna process sounds all the time. And if plugins sound different at different sample rates then why not take that into consideration?

The reason I was able to tell the difference in visheshls earlier example was because of the annoying sizzly sound that occurs in the super bright frequencies when played at 44100.
Could be that my monitors (Adam A7X) are pretty bright sounding, so maybe they highlight certain frequencies that other speakers simply don't.

Anyway why am I still engaging in this discussion? I said I wasn't gonna talk further on this topic. That failed miserably
People are not gonna change their views anyway. The people who believe it doesn't matter will continue to use 44100 or 44800 and people like me will go for 88200 or higher.
Just do whatever makes you happy. There problem solved. That's all for me here. That's a promise. See you in another thread.

[chaosroyale]

I agree with the "do whatever makes you happy" part, but I don't understand why people don't just spend a few minutes to watch that damn primer video (and the fabfilter one) and learn exactly what is going on. This is not about belief. It's math & physics.

As several ppl including me have explained now, any differences you hear are due to specific use cases, such as poorly designed plugins acting differently at different sample rates.

What you are hearing are artifacts.

It is nothing to do with being able to hear more detail at a higher sample rate. It is simply that your specific setup is generating one set of artifacts at 44.1, and different artifacts at 88.2. If you prefer the artifacts you get from your setup, that's fine.

People are not gonna change their views anyway. The people who believe it doesn't matter will continue to use 44100 or 44800 and people like me will go for 88200 or higher.
Just do whatever makes you happy.

[avasopht]

Anyway why am I still engaging in this discussion? I said I wasn't gonna talk further on this topic. That failed miserably
People are not gonna change their views anyway. The people who believe it doesn't matter will continue to use 44100 or 44800 and people like me will go for 88200 or higher.
Just do whatever makes you happy. There problem solved. That's all for me here. That's a promise. See you in another thread.

Like chaosroyale, I don't see the need to turn this into a thing of "beliefs".

It's understanding.

Nobody (who understands that at least) is saying there is absolutely no difference in working at 88.2k or 96k. For devices lacking oversampling that do introduce harmonics above Nyquist, the higher sample rate reduces aliasing.

The whole point of oversampling is that we know that the sample rate does matter during some processes (e.g. FM synthesis or distortion).

But it provides no benefit as a listening format for two reasons:
1. You're probably not making music for dolphins.
2. Your speakers probably can't produce anything above 15-20k.

The difference you are hearing comes from aliasing. The synth sounds like it lacks oversampling, and one of the things that can happen in audio processing is that "non-linear" operations can introduce harmonics (some of which may be higher than Nyquist or the sample rate). When harmonics (or frequencies) above Nyquist are introduced, they get mirrored back (which creates the "sizzle" sound you described).

To reiterate, it is possible for an audio process to introduce frequencies higher than its own sample rate - but they will be aliased at the moment of processing.

Hence why we have oversampling, or might run the entire project at a higher sample rate.

I always thought it would have been better if this could be optionally handled by the DAW, where some devices are run at a higher sample rate than the project rate, and the DAW handles the conversions between.

[integerpoet]

The question isn't whether there's a difference. There absolutely is and it's not even worth listening for; folks ought to just trust you when you say you hear it.

not necessarily true. a difference while in the box can be fully negated when it comes back out. and it’s physically impossible for us to hear what’s going on inside the box. as others have already explained, audio waveforms are recreated perfectly up to half the Nyquist frequency. the only audible differences are introduced by other factors (anything randomly introduced each time a file is bounced, aliasing, and the like).

as for why people shouldn’t just take others at their word, that seems a silly argument, when there ways available to objectively prove one way or another whether there’s a difference. that’s to ask “why prove it when you can take it on faith?”

That decontextualized quote obscures my purpose. If you have aliasing problems and you export at 44.1 and 96 and the problems are masked at 96, then that may well be an audible difference. Depending on how bad the aliasing problems are, they might be sufficiently blatant that it seems insulting to someone who can hear them to question whether they can hear them. They can. They may not know what they are, but that's a different issue.

[guitfnky]

not necessarily true. a difference while in the box can be fully negated when it comes back out. and it’s physically impossible for us to hear what’s going on inside the box. as others have already explained, audio waveforms are recreated perfectly up to half the Nyquist frequency. the only audible differences are introduced by other factors (anything randomly introduced each time a file is bounced, aliasing, and the like).

as for why people shouldn’t just take others at their word, that seems a silly argument, when there ways available to objectively prove one way or another whether there’s a difference. that’s to ask “why prove it when you can take it on faith?”

That decontextualized quote obscures my purpose. If you have aliasing problems and you export at 44.1 and 96 and the problems are masked at 96, then that may well be an audible difference. Depending on how bad the aliasing problems are, they might be sufficiently blatant that it seems insulting to someone who can hear them to question whether they can hear them. They can. They may not know what they are, but that's a different issue.

they can’t hear the difference if you can objectively prove there is no difference. which you can. so…why wouldn’t you?

you can see that as insulting if you like, but I’ve been working with audio for long enough to know (and have experienced) how easy it is for a human brain to think it perceives something that isn’t there. it’s a common thing for example, for someone to a/b a minor tweak thinking that one sounds brighter or punchier or whatever adjective you like than the other, only to realize the effect wasn’t actually turned on, or routed properly, etc. I did this a long time ago on a real console in a real studio, and the real audio engineer I was learning from at the time just chuckled and said “happens to everyone who does this long enough” (paraphrasing). that scenario may be less common now that everything is done inside the box, and it’s often easier to see what’s going on with all the fancy new tools we have at our disposal, but that’s beside the point. the takeaway is that I thought I was hearing a difference that didn’t exist, and because of it, my brain convinced me that I was.

was the dress blue? or was it gold? human perception is imperfect at best. why else would so many of us need so many tools to help us realize the guitar is masking the bass at 230 hz, or that the timing of the kick is what’s making the keyboard sound wonky? if we could trust our perception, we’d all be great mix engineers needing only a quality multitrack tape deck, and a bunch of console channel strips/hardware EQs and compressors (hell, we wouldn’t even need metering, if that were the case).

[SoundObjects]

Just some funny examples hows the brain can be fooled by listening.

https://www.hear.com/useful-knowledge/a ... illusions/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... illusions/

(Always using 44.1khz/24bit)

[integerpoet]

they can’t hear the difference if you can objectively prove there is no difference. which you can. so…why wouldn’t you?

Let's not lose sight of the differences between these two kinds of post:

• Someone posts that some projects sound better when rendered at 96 than 44.1. It's reasonable to suggest there may be aliasing problems in the projects masked by rendering at 96. It's reasonable to point out that doesn't mean 96 is inherently superior to 44.1. There's no reason to assume the poster is hallucinating.
• Someone posts that 96 is inherently superior to 44.1. They are sorely mistaken and the forum schools them gently and patiently. They insist they are correct and after a while the forum gives up and moves on.

Conflating the two kinds of post is where the insult (intended or reasonably perceived) comes in.

Remember that winning an argument on a forum entitles you to no prize.

[guitfnky]

they can’t hear the difference if you can objectively prove there is no difference. which you can. so…why wouldn’t you?

Let's not lose sight of the differences between these two kinds of post:

• Someone posts that some projects sound better when rendered at 96 than 44.1. It's reasonable to suggest there may be aliasing problems in the projects masked by rendering at 96. It's reasonable to point out that doesn't mean 96 is inherently superior to 44.1. There's no reason to assume the poster is hallucinating.
• Someone posts that 96 is inherently superior to 44.1. They are sorely mistaken and the forum schools them gently and patiently. They insist they are correct and after a while the forum gives up and moves on.

Conflating the two kinds of post is where the insult (intended or reasonably perceived) comes in.

Remember that winning an argument on a forum entitles you to no prize.

if I came here for the prizes, I’d have given up long ago.

you’re free think what you like about my motivations or whether you think I’m misrepresenting anything. I put my faith in reality, and what can be proven, not in belief. I believe a bee has somehow worked its way into your bonnet over this, for some reason, but my feelings don’t make that true, nor can I prove otherwise. so I too am reduced to thinking what I like. doesn’t mean a thing for either one of us.

as the saying goes, put up, or shut up. it should be a fairly easy matter to settle, yet for some reason all there has been is resistance. I wonder why that might be…

[SoundObjects]

Some deja vu about this discussion -
History has shown a lot of chaotic conditions when science try to compete against faith and religion

[WeLoveYouToo]

i only use higher sample rates when recording live audio that i will pitch/time shift, otherwise 48 for dvd 44.1 for cd

[integerpoet]

you’re free think what you like about my motivations or whether you think I’m misrepresenting anything. I put my faith in reality, and what can be proven, not in belief. I believe a bee has somehow worked its way into your bonnet over this, for some reason, but my feelings don’t make that true, nor can I prove otherwise. so I too am reduced to thinking what I like. doesn’t mean a thing for either one of us.
as the saying goes, put up, or shut up. it should be a fairly easy matter to settle, yet for some reason all there has been is resistance. I wonder why that might be…

I may be able to explain said bee in said bonnet.

When I see someone say they can hear a difference between 44.1 and 96, I'm not especially interested in settling or proving anything. That would be too much like my day job.

I'm more interested in participating in a welcoming environment and maybe learning and sharing along the way. (For example, I just now learned about Subtractor's aliasing "issue" without expecting to.)

As a result, I would rather entertain the possibility that a poster who says they hear a difference isn't simply hallucinating. After all, as we've seen in this thread, there are several ways that can come to pass.

As I wrote earlier, it's perfectly reasonable to take the opportunity to point out there are no inherent quality wins for 96 over 44.1. But that doesn't have to be the only thing one says.

[Billy+]

Isn't this all sorted yet?

When capturing real world sound capture at the highest you can.
When creating with software synths use the highest you can.

Up sampling isn't good.
Down sampling is good.

When working with the audio for export use what's requested and 44.1 is going to work perfectly well but is probably the minimum your pro vst's want.

Finished/Done/Solved - Move on there's nothing more interesting unless you like reading wise cracks

Oh I forgot, and older people hear less don't trust their ears above 13Khz

[guitfnky]

I may be able to explain said bee in said bonnet.

…I'm not especially interested in…
…I'm more interested in…
…I would rather…

nailed it—different strokes for different folks. I am a different person than you are. I have a different perspective, and different priorities.

[selig]

When I see someone say they can hear a difference between 44.1 and 96, I'm not especially interested in settling or proving anything. That would be too much like my day job.

I'm more interested in participating in a welcoming environment and maybe learning and sharing along the way. (For example, I just now learned about Subtractor's aliasing "issue" without expecting to.)

As a result, I would rather entertain the possibility that a poster who says they hear a difference isn't simply hallucinating. After all, as we've seen in this thread, there are several ways that can come to pass.

As I wrote earlier, it's perfectly reasonable to take the opportunity to point out there are no inherent quality wins for 96 over 44.1. But that doesn't have to be the only thing one says.

But there ARE quality wins for higher sample rates if you're going to be pitching samples down, which implies you cannot make blanket statements such as that - or ANY blanket statements about "sample rate" IMO because there are too many additional variables involved beyond just sample rate such as oversampling, the type and design of all filters involved in the process, the source audio, the hardware, etc.

There are two things going on here that I'm seeing - hearing a difference, and concluding what is the CAUSE of this difference. If you, for example, compare different sample rates using an interface that has a wildly different sound at different rates and then conclude higher sample rates "sound better", that's where the "problems" arise. I say this because there are some convertors that sound just about identical at ALL sample rates, and some convertors (cheaper ones typically) that can sound wildly different at different rates. So yes, you are hearing a differences in SOME cases, but no, it's not JUST the sample rate that's affecting this difference - so you cannot conclude as a blanket statement that higher rates are "better", except for in that one particular case. If you instead used different convertors to do a comparison you MAY has concluded there is NO difference, which is equally inaccurate IMO.

Same for software synths - if you compare a synth that aliases bad at lower rates but not at higher rates you may conclude higher sample rates sound better (or at least, sound different). OTOH, if you did your initial comparison with a synth that did NOT sound different at different rates, you would have made a totally different conclusion.

I say this to shed light on all the variables out there that are not being considered in this conversation, which make an already complicated concept even more complicated (and unnecessarily so IMO).

[integerpoet]

As I wrote earlier, it's perfectly reasonable to take the opportunity to point out there are no inherent quality wins for 96 over 44.1. But that doesn't have to be the only thing one says.

But there ARE quality wins for higher sample rates if you're going to be pitching samples down, which implies you cannot make blanket statements such as that - or ANY blanket statements about "sample rate" IMO because there are too many additional variables involved beyond just sample rate such as oversampling, the type and design of all filters involved in the process, the source audio, the hardware, etc.

Well, sure, and blanket statements are always wrong , but this thread started with running Reason-as-a-whole at a particular sample rate and conflated that with export sample rate, so that's what I was thinking about.

[Dante]

96Khz all the way for me. PC and DSP appliances all run @96Khz.

[eXode]

But there ARE quality wins for higher sample rates if you're going to be pitching samples down, which implies you cannot make blanket statements such as that - or ANY blanket statements about "sample rate" IMO because there are too many additional variables involved beyond just sample rate such as oversampling, the type and design of all filters involved in the process, the source audio, the hardware, etc.

There are two things going on here that I'm seeing - hearing a difference, and concluding what is the CAUSE of this difference. If you, for example, compare different sample rates using an interface that has a wildly different sound at different rates and then conclude higher sample rates "sound better", that's where the "problems" arise. I say this because there are some convertors that sound just about identical at ALL sample rates, and some convertors (cheaper ones typically) that can sound wildly different at different rates. So yes, you are hearing a differences in SOME cases, but no, it's not JUST the sample rate that's affecting this difference - so you cannot conclude as a blanket statement that higher rates are "better", except for in that one particular case. If you instead used different convertors to do a comparison you MAY has concluded there is NO difference, which is equally inaccurate IMO.

Same for software synths - if you compare a synth that aliases bad at lower rates but not at higher rates you may conclude higher sample rates sound better (or at least, sound different). OTOH, if you did your initial comparison with a synth that did NOT sound different at different rates, you would have made a totally different conclusion.

I say this to shed light on all the variables out there that are not being considered in this conversation, which make an already complicated concept even more complicated (and unnecessarily so IMO).

Another problem is that the OP is also talking about high-res audio for listening and there's a difference between working with a sample rate because of the aforementioned advantages vs a pure listening scenario and people seem to have a problem differentiating between the two usage scenarios.

[selig]

Another problem is that the OP is also talking about high-res audio for listening and there's a difference between working with a sample rate because of the aforementioned advantages vs a pure listening scenario and people seem to have a problem differentiating between the two usage scenarios.

I was going to include “delivery” rates in my post as another point of confusion because of different platforms adopting different delivery rates, not to mention different genres focusing on different rates. Didn’t want to further muddy the waters, but that is a valid concern to be sure.

But the main issue for me is the conflation of one experience to ALL other scenarios as I previously mentioned. Bottom line, test each scenario separately especially if different hardware/software is being used compared to whatever you tested previously.