44.1 kHz vs 48 kHz

[jeff]

I finally got around to testing my newer DAW yesterday.  Sounds much better

I noticed that everything is set up to record at 48kHz.  Was built by a 3rd party with Video Production in mind, so that makes sense.

Is there any reason I should change to 44.1 for music collabs?  Or am I safe using the default 48?  Should I export to 44.1 for collab purposes...or leave it as is?

Thanks for any input you may have.

Jeff

[McLovin]

Thanks for posting this Jeff,... I am wondering about the 44.1 and 48 kHz thing also.

Jay

[Paulo]

Maybe, Jeff  ... Most of the standard stuff wont read 48 Khz... And anyhow, if you're going to burn it to CD, you'll have to do 44.1 Khz, 16 bit.

Anyway, I always record may original stuff at 96Khz and 24 bit... Just post it in a way I know everyone cand read.

[Gerk]

For standard audio projects (i.e. not going to be for video) 44.1k is the best.  For video soundtrack work 48k is the best.  Sticking to the native format for the final output media gives the best results (cd's/web audio are 44.1, DV based video is 48k).  This comes up again and again, it's good that it has it's own thread now.

To put it in terms that i know you'll understand jeff ... it's similar to working in native colorpsace ... you don't want to do RGB for things destined for CMYK output, and vice-versa.  It equates to about the same thing in the end game, going from 48k -> 44.1k at final output is like converting CMYK to RGB, it's going to lose something in the translation every time.

Mark

[jeff]

Cool. Thanks! 

Jeff

[nishant]

If u want to produce audio for collabs and are not doing film work 44.1 is perfect.
48 to 44.1-use a dither plugin on master channel and then render.

[jeff]

Yeah, I wonder about that.  Its hard to know how something might be used in the end.  It would be good to have all options available.

Is there some sort of trick for converting 44.1 to 48?  If some track eventually ends up on a DVD...like my uhmmm "music videos" how should that be handled?

[nishant]

i think only downsampling requires a trick
44.1 to 48 won't result in increase or decrease in quality.

[Thunder]

48hrz & 24 bit works for me,the 48 makes my cymbals a bit brighter.

[Gerk]

48hrz & 24 bit works for me,the 48 makes my cymbals a bit brighter.

Not sure how it would make your cymbals brighter to have more samples per second honestly ... but hey whatever works for ya. 

As I say this is a big debate, do some googling about it .. there are tons of discussions about this and different people feel very differently on it, but I remember reading something from Bob Katz on this (think it was in his book on mastering) and I'm sticking with what he says -- which makes perfect sense to me -- to avoid dithering/downsampling where at all possible.  Even when i do higher bit rate recordings I don't do 96k, I do 88.2k (because 88.2 / 2 is 44.1 so it doesn't have to do any audio dithering when downsampling).

Mark

[jeff]

Ok then...how do major studios handle things?

Label artists have CDs, Music Videos and songs included in Films.

Or is that more a mixing thang?

[CosmicDolphin]

The quality of the convertors will make more difference to the sound than the sample rate.

You can buy some fantastic sounding 16bit 44.1k Dacs and cheapo ones that can do 24bit 48k or more...but sound worse....the specs won't tell you what sounds best just your ears.

I'd say it's worth recording in 24 bit so you get a better signal to noise ratio, but beyond that you'll probably find other things in the recording or mixing chain will make more difference than switching to 48k from 44.1.

CD

[Gerk]

Yep exactly CD.  24bit is a very good thing. 

If you can afford high quality converters then 48k->44.1k is fine.  If you're doing just software conversions you will lose quality downsampling without a doubt.

Mark

[Gerk]

Ok then...how do major studios handle things?

Label artists have CDs, Music Videos and songs included in Films.

Or is that more a mixing thang?

Yep that's a probably a mastering time thing.  Larger studio setups are recording at much higher sampling rates anyway and have high quality conversion hardware to do their downsampling.  For us poor folk that pay for our own gear I prefer to record in the native sampling rate where possible

Also it's most likely that the audio for a video is mastered separately for the audio for a CD.

Mark

[Tacman7]

I put the 88.2 is good because it's double 44.1 argument forward on a board and got a lot of people saying that it's not the same. That the precision of the downsampling process is a lot better now days etc. and you that's not a valid claim.

I mean I can see that in graphics when you have even numbers it would divide cleanly and you wouldn't throw away more than you have to.

I was working at 88,2 but it did cause a strain on my system and I was using up too much of my UAD resources. So I went back to 48k. Maybe it won't make my final product any better but I like working in 48k. I feel an extra crispness to the sound, even if it's a placebo effect, I'll take it.

If your making wma's (which is all I do) it doesn't matter any way.

Dither is only about bit depth, nothing to do with sample rate. (that's what I thought)

I started dithering the 24bit files down to 16 but leaving them at 48k. Does this play on other systems? This is something I was playing around with but it's a 48k wma. I didn't know they did that, I thought they automatically changed to 44.1 but anyway, does it play on a mac?

Thanks