project owner is currently looking at this as a vanity project

In that case there is no doubt you should use 24/192. 192 kHz is all about vanity, and anyone who doesn't know what he wants will certainly be easily convinced that anything less is inferior. No sense wasting your time at anything rational when the next engineer he sees will tell him that you provided a substandard sampling rate to explain why he can't make the client happy either.

I'm ashamed to say that I can't hear the difference between 44.1 , 96 or anything in between :-/ 

Bibs

wizard71

I'm ashamed to say that I can't hear the difference between 44.1 , 96 or anything in between :-/ 

Bibs

I really couldn't either except when I was using the test tones.

How hard I hit the bass strings, where in relation to the pickups I plucked them, and that kind of thing made more of a difference than any difference I could perceive between 44.1 and 96 in a live recording.

The only reason I use 96 is because of latency.

Now, that's the difference between two settings on the same device.

Stick a Lavry DAC next to my Fast Track Ultra and compare at the same sample rate, and I bet there is a very big audible difference. Or maybe not. I'll never know at the price he's asking for them.

wizard71


I'm ashamed to say that I can't hear the difference between 44.1 , 96 or anything in between :-/ 

Bibs

That's because nobody can.

Asides from my cat

Guitarpima

wizard71


I'm ashamed to say that I can't hear the difference between 44.1 , 96 or anything in between :-/ 

Bibs

That's because nobody can.

Guitarpima

wizard71


I'm ashamed to say that I can't hear the difference between 44.1 , 96 or anything in between :-/ 

Bibs

That's because nobody can.

People who still play disco music can. 

The sampling rate isn't normally going to "change" the sound, but rather help in the realm of accuracy of the original audio. If you've ever been through Calculus classes (Limits and Integrals), you can start to really dig how sampling and bit-depth come into play. In all reality, 44.1Khz might be good enough of a sampling rate for human ears, which is why CD Audio was set to that, and any frequencies above 20Khz in the audio were essentially filtered out in your CD players. 

For most ears, 44.1Khz is plenty good. However, Audiophiles will fight to the bitter end that you can actually hear/perceive frequencies way beyond 20Khz, which aren't specifically interpreted by your ears and brain as sound, but cause your brain to release chemicals that help "sweeten" the audio so that because of the super-sonic frequencies only birds can hear make cymbal hits and such sound sweeter and less fatiguing to your ears.

I don't know if I'd immediately subscribe to this, but just as an EQ can bring up frequencies around the center band of a boost, so, the accuracy of the top-end sampling rate can (in theory) more accurately allow you to record even higher "audible" frequencies, whether anyone cares or not. 

Now, 24-bit vs. 16-bit is audibly different. Dynamic range is more apparent in 24-bit vs. 16-bit especially when it comes to loud frequencies and super quiet. Many claim more 3D to their audio. I just feel it's less claustrophobic and more "open". 

Bub



I use 96kHz all the time on my Fast Track Ultra. Reason is, if you track with Input Echo on so you can hear the effects real time, there is less latency the higher your Sample Rate. I found that setting my Fast Track Ultra to 88.1kHz causes problems with the driver, so I stopped using it. Scott is right, I have read a lot about people liking 88.1kHz because of how well it converts to CD format.

Good luck.

Bub.

Yes, I've noticed this, but don't understand the mathematics as to why latency is improved at higher sample rates.
I guess if your computer is up to the task, the higher sample rate seems best, regardless whether you will hear the difference or not.
 
 

I'd take the advice of a boutique ADDA vendor with just a little seasoning.

My take on sample rate/depth...

By all means got with 24 bit if you can - more headroom means less noise. No argument here.

The only beef some might have with 44.1 is that you need a hell of a sharp nyquist anti-aliasing filter and that can cause all sorts of phase issues. But, most audio devices today oversample (or rather interpolate) the sample data up so that nyquist goes way up to and a gentle anti-alias filter can be used instead.

As for higher sample rates, well you have your basic 44.1 CD and 48k audio-for-video standards, and multiple of that at 88.2, 96, and 192khz. These higher ones may give better resolution, but it's wasted as we can't hear it. Reportedly though, the  increased sample data does give pitch-shifting algorithms more to work with and better results, but this is singular case.

I use 88.2 for what I would consider my more important projects and 44.1 for everything else.  I think the sound quality is slightly better at 88.2 but it's so slight that I can't say for sure. The performance is much more of a difference than the sample rate. Another thing to consider is the difference between using a 24 and a 32 bit rate. I hear no difference between the two but a huge difference between 24/32 and 16.