[LAU] 48k vs. 44.1k

[Ralph Bluecoat]

>
> Having decided that, what other issues cross my
> path if I default my audio rate to 48k?


Mainly, clocking issues. If for some reason an application thinks it is
running in 44.1 but the system is at 48, there will be playback issues like
pops and the likes.. I know I ran into this working with Reaper using Wine.

Perhaps not much of a 21st century issue, but if you are making projects
that you intend to put onto CD, you will have to downsample to 44.1hz at
16-bit, as this is the Red Book specification for CD quality audio. A
trivial task, but still time consuming and an extra step to think about.

Speaking as one of the devs for the Ubuntu Studio distro, I'm wondering
> how much trouble I'm going to get for asking for 48k default sample rate
> in audio.


It really depends on what the target audience for the audio software. In
the pro audio-music world, 44.1khz is still more widely used because it has
been a standard for years in digital audio for CD, and I honestly don't see
it changing to 48khz anytime soon (96/24 would be the next "level" you
would typically find.) A 48khz sample rate is used (almost exclusively) in
the film industry for synching audio to visual media rather than pure
audio. Games, movie, and television audio are in a 48khz format at minimal.

>From a recording standpoint, it would be much more beneficial to change the
bitrate at 24 bits instead of the default 16, as you get more dynamic range
and headroom in the recording process.

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 10:38 PM, Len Ovens <len at ovenwerks.net> wrote:

> From earlier talk about sample rates, it appears that for recording audio,
> 48k is better than 44.1. Having decided that, what other issues cross my
> path if I default my audio rate to 48k? All of my softsynths seem to
> work... I do wonder about samplers though. Are the samples mostly in 44.1k
> if they come on a CD? Would that make them off-key when used? Would they
> get rate-changed on the fly? Would that use more CPU? (questions,
> questions, questions)
>
> It does not seem to affect my desktop, flash, ogg, mp3, ac3 etc. all
> playback fine. Pulse seems to be doing more work though at least when
> playing a CD. I'm pushing it pretty hard though, I have it bridged to
> jackdbus with -p64 so Pulse has to keep up.
>
> I'm just wondering why Ubuntu (which presumably means Debian too),
> qjackctl, Pulse and lots of other audio apps all seem to default to 44.1k.
>
> Speaking as one of the devs for the Ubuntu Studio distro, I'm wondering
> how much trouble I'm going to get for asking for 48k default sample rate
> in audio.
>
>
> --
> Len Ovens
> www.OvenWerks.net
>
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> Linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org
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>
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