TritoneAddiction wrote: ↑03 Jul 2021
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.