grizwalter
PS: Kinda curious on this issue, btw. 24 bit, 48K I'm told is really where one wants to be, eventually down to 16-bit, 44.1K for CD. Degredation can occur, I understand, but wondering realistically why anyone would need to go much higher than 24/24 frankly, 48K - 60ishK?
It's a little bit complicated and there is some controversy here.
As a playback medium:
Theoretically, in the modern world 44.1 is good enough. And with modern sample rate conversion (SRC) - and Sonar's is very good - converting between sample rates is transparent to the listener. In the real world, the higher frequencies available at higher sampling rates are unlikely to be audible or desirable - unless you are producing very high level, high frequency pure sine waves for young people playing things back through a system that can cleanly reproduce such frequencies. Double blind tests where sample rate changes down to 44.1kHz were introduced to the audio have resulted in people not being able to tell the difference.
HOWEVER, it has been stated that at least some digital to analog converters perform differently at different sample rates. This is most likely due to the specific design of the DAC rather than the sample rate alone. And note that you only have control over your own DAC, not other listeners.
For processing inside the DAW:
Some types of processing benefit from being done at higher sampling rates. In many cases, particularly for more modern plugins, the process is oversampled internally where desirable or necessary.
You can also achieve lower latency with a DAW using a higher sampling rate.
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I would say that in the real world, the questions regarding degradation come down to not whether something is theoretically better, but whether the differences are audible.