[LAU] Tracking at 44.1 vs. 48k vs 96k?

[James Stone]

On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Len Ovens <len at ovenwerks.net> wrote:
>
> On Thu, February 7, 2013 2:17 am, James Stone wrote:
>> Are there any advantages to using 96k (or 48k?) if the final target is
>> 44.1k/16bit? I am thinking that tracking at 44.1k / 24 bit should be
>> more than sufficient for most (non-pro) purposes?
>>
>> I read somewhere about higher bitrate being important for headroom for
>> audio processing plugins, but does samplerate also have an effect on
>> this?
>
> 48k seems to be the standard the ADCs are built for. The non-pro audio
> cards (AC97 and HDA) are designed around 48k. In fact AC97 codecs sample
> at 48K and resample down to 44.1k sometimes badly (SB Live!). Go back a
> month in this list a month or so for more reasons why 44.1k is less than
> good for recording.
>

Yep - thanks Len - that was certainly my experience with SBLive and
onboard sound.

With the Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, it actually seems to run with
(slightly) less CPU load at 44.1k than 48k (much less than 96k), and I
think it might make 44.1k a better choice to avoid the extra
downsampling etc. for the final mix in that instance. Not sure if it
actually runs natively at 48k or whatever tho - not sure how I would
find that out.

James