Audio Mastering: Sample Rate

At the precipice of the home recording revolution, there was one sample rate: 44.1khz. And there was essentially one bit depth: 16-bit. Before that, there was 8-bit, and very low sample rates (less than 44.1khz). Now days, audio semi-pros and home studio folks are being pushed the line to record at the highest possible sample rates.

Before you reach for your settings and crank up your sample rate to 192khz,There are some things you should know about sample rate

This website gives a good overview of sampling theory. http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Pay special attention to the inter-modulation section of the website:

If you're curious about the performance of your own system, the following samples contain a 30kHz and a 33kHz tone in a 24/96 WAV file, a longer version in a FLAC, some tri-tone warbles, and a normal song clip shifted up by 24kHz so that it's entirely in the ultrasonic range from 24kHz to 46kHz:

Intermod Tests:
- 30kHz tone + 33kHz tone (24 bit / 96kHz) [5 second WAV] [30 second FLAC]
- 26kHz - 48kHz warbling tones (24 bit / 96kHz) [10 second WAV]
- 26kHz - 96kHz warbling tones (24 bit / 192kHz) [10 second WAV]
- Song clip shifted up by 24kHz (24 bit / 96kHz WAV) [10 second WAV]
  (original version of above clip) (16 bit / 44.1kHz WAV)

Assuming your system is actually capable of full 96kHz playback [6], the above files should be completely silent with no audible noises, tones, whistles, clicks, or other sounds. If you hear anything, your system has a nonlinearity causing audible intermodulation of the ultrasonics. Be careful when increasing volume; running into digital or analog clipping, even soft clipping, will suddenly cause loud intermodulation tones.

Source: http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

In my own system, 44.1khz, 48khz and 96khz have no inter-modulation artifacts. This means that I can realistically work at 48khz or even 44.1khz and still have just as good clarity and quality as 96khz, which is great because it means I can worry less about CPU load!

Here's a video of 8-bit music. One of the problems with early digital audio was that it utilized poor down-sampling filters, and probably wasn't dithered, which is why it sounds so washy and awful at times.