#1681071 - 05/25/05 08:26 AM
96 Khz
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Digital Post
Senior Member
Registered: 12/13/02
Posts: 303
Loc: Maracaibo -Venezuela
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How many records are actually being made at 96Khz / 24bits? HOw many of you are using it? and why or why not? does you actually need a better performance computer and hard drives?
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#1681074 - 05/26/05 05:17 PM
Re: 96 Khz
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Chris Carter
Senior Member
Registered: 08/22/04
Posts: 53
Loc: Oakland, CA, USA
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Virtually nobody I know is cutting tracks at 96kHz mainly because it significantly taxes the DAW trying to run all those tracks and run all the processing at 96kHz.
There's actually no sonic advantage to the actual recording. The "better sound" people say they hear is actually the sound of the D/A filter in the converter. There have been numerous tests where people have designed identical filters of very high quality and you couldn't tell the different between the filter being set at 20Khz or 40kHz because us humans can't hear above that. And tests where people have taken a 48kHz file and converted it to 96kHz (which of course adds no new sonic info) and then play it back and it sounds better magically... 'cause of the D/A filters of course.
There is one benefit though. Processing done at 96kHz generally sounds better because the distortion from the processing is now spread over twice as many samples... and half of that is above what humans can hear. So the amount of audible distortion is roughly half (theoretically, at least... there are other factors that wash out some of that). But the same exact benefits would be found by taking a 48kHz signal and upsampling it to 96kHz before processing it (like Weiss products do, I believe).
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#1681075 - 05/26/05 07:49 PM
Re: 96 Khz
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theblue1
MP Hall of Fame Member
Registered: 02/06/04
Posts: 4537
Loc: Long Beach, CA
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I don't use 96 kHz because my target format is 44.1 and these days I mix in the box. When one remains in the digital domain through the entire chain, eventually that means an 'uneven' downsample to 44.1, which involves a remapping of all sample values. While downsampling algorithms have arguably improved, I don't see any point in mangling my sound any more than I have to. If I wanted to work at a higher sample rate, I'd use 88.2, since it can be cleanly downsampled to 44.1 kHz.
BTW, Apogee did some tests quite a while ago where they did blindfold listening tests to 48kHz 24 bit compared to 96 kHz 16 bit. As I recall, the consensus was overwhelmingly that the 48/24 sounded signifcantly better than the 96/16. (Of course, no one uses 96/16. But 10 years ago, at least some people (okay, equipment manufacturers) were talking about it as a 'new standard' and it was, indeed, briefly offered on some gear.)
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#1681076 - 05/26/05 08:50 PM
Re: 96 Khz
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Philip O'Keefe
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Registered: 12/17/00
Posts: 17674
Loc: Riverside,CA,UNITED STATES
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IMO, when dealing with raw / unprocessed audio file recording, there's a much bigger sonic improvement with 24 bit than there is with 96 kHz.
FWIW, I'm still primarily 24 / 44.1 kHz on nearly everything I do.
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#1681077 - 05/26/05 09:15 PM
Re: 96 Khz
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kylen
MP Hall of Fame Member
Registered: 05/06/03
Posts: 3988
Loc: Southern WV, USA
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I don't know anything about commercially distributed stuff...
In my own laboratory I tried 96KHz/24bit for about 3 months and did a few projects with it. It absolutely killed my DAW (2.6MHz P4 w/1Gb mem) and I didn't really hear anything that much different (maybe a little) out my DAC-1 and Event ASP8s. I kept the 24bit thing though - I like that, I already had that going.
The other thing is some of the EQ and compressor plugins I use, from Voxengo for example, use oversampling which I believe applies the effect using a wider bandwidth. Somebody who knows something can explain it better - or I will after a bit of chewing...
I was thinking I would transcribe some old stuff at 96KHz also but I guess I'm gonna bag that for either 44.1 or more likely 48KHz.
Maybe I'll try 96KHz again after a cpu upgrade... 
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