sound_designer
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Sampling Rate
Digital sound is produced by sampling a sound (or should I say the electrical version of it) in real time and expressing it in bit words. Once you start sampling or recording digital sound a clock starts and progressive samples of what the sound is are taken. The rate at which the samples are taken is called the sampling rate.
Why 44.1kHz Sampling Rate?
Why not 44, or a nice round number like 50. When the first engineers were inventing digital sound they had worked out the on/off, 0/1, idea and needed a way to represent it. The idea came to use white dots on a TV screen where a white dot was on and a black dot was off. Neat. So you record it like a video picture on a video recorder. That was fine, but the engineers had been caught out before. What about PAL (the European video standard) and NTSC? (the American and Japanese standard.) They weren't going to get caught up in that again, no way, so they configured a number that was compatible between the 528 line NTSC and 625line PAL and the number was 44.1kHz. Just a piece of useless info you might want one day!
What you can see from the above is how the digital recorders were developed. They were Beta Video Recorders with an external processor and digital audio had arrived. The beta video became the DAT and the DAT became the ADat and the D88 and they are all basically video recorder decks. The ADat used a SuperVHS deck while the D88 used a High8 deck. The basic SuperVHS deck was pretty awful and the ADat of today is a completely rebuilt deck. It's a shame the world chose to make the VHS deck the standard because the Beta Decks were far superior. Market forces don't always give the best outcome. Did you know that when an ADat or D88 records on a new track it plays the bit stream off the tape , mixes in the new track, and records it again. Now that's worth thinking about.
In an article by Rupert Neve, I read recently, he said that we should aim for 24bit resolution and 192kHz sampling rate if we want to equal the quality of high quality analogue recording. We will get there. DVD is already up to 24 bit 96kHz sampling so we are on the way. But if your 16bit, 44.1kHz CD sounds bright, consider what makes it bright and you will see that it's a false bright created by the high frequencies sounding like square waves!!
Digital sound is produced by sampling a sound (or should I say the electrical version of it) in real time and expressing it in bit words. Once you start sampling or recording digital sound a clock starts and progressive samples of what the sound is are taken. The rate at which the samples are taken is called the sampling rate.
Why 44.1kHz Sampling Rate?
Why not 44, or a nice round number like 50. When the first engineers were inventing digital sound they had worked out the on/off, 0/1, idea and needed a way to represent it. The idea came to use white dots on a TV screen where a white dot was on and a black dot was off. Neat. So you record it like a video picture on a video recorder. That was fine, but the engineers had been caught out before. What about PAL (the European video standard) and NTSC? (the American and Japanese standard.) They weren't going to get caught up in that again, no way, so they configured a number that was compatible between the 528 line NTSC and 625line PAL and the number was 44.1kHz. Just a piece of useless info you might want one day!
What you can see from the above is how the digital recorders were developed. They were Beta Video Recorders with an external processor and digital audio had arrived. The beta video became the DAT and the DAT became the ADat and the D88 and they are all basically video recorder decks. The ADat used a SuperVHS deck while the D88 used a High8 deck. The basic SuperVHS deck was pretty awful and the ADat of today is a completely rebuilt deck. It's a shame the world chose to make the VHS deck the standard because the Beta Decks were far superior. Market forces don't always give the best outcome. Did you know that when an ADat or D88 records on a new track it plays the bit stream off the tape , mixes in the new track, and records it again. Now that's worth thinking about.
In an article by Rupert Neve, I read recently, he said that we should aim for 24bit resolution and 192kHz sampling rate if we want to equal the quality of high quality analogue recording. We will get there. DVD is already up to 24 bit 96kHz sampling so we are on the way. But if your 16bit, 44.1kHz CD sounds bright, consider what makes it bright and you will see that it's a false bright created by the high frequencies sounding like square waves!!
