What is Sample Rate and Bit Rate Depth?
Both image and video data have some numerical values related to image quality, such as the number of pixels, the number of colors that can be expressed, and the number of frames per second in the case of video.
Similarly, audio data also has two numerical values related to sound quality, which are the sample rate and the bit rate. I do not understand the difficulty in either case, but I am sure I am not mistaken, so I will write about these two today.
Sampling rate
Let’s start with the sample rate.
Simply put, the sample rate is a numerical value that indicates “how loud the sound is recorded.” For some reason, when the sampling frequency is 44.1 kHz, it is not possible to record up to 44.1 kHz and it seems that it is possible to record up to about 22 kHz. Remember that you register up to half the frequency. If you’re wondering why that happens, google it (laughs).
It seems to have an effect on the sound of musical instruments that produce a crisp sound like cymbals, but I have never bothered to change the sample rate under the same conditions and compare them, so the amount of sound depends on the frequency of sampling. It is unknown if it will change. In professional environments, it is often recorded at 48 kHz. On rare occasions, the sample rate changes the sound quality, and some teachers boast that they can tell the difference. You seem to understand something. I would love to take a blind test, but I don’t have free time to go out with me.
Bit rate depth
This is a numerical representation of “how low a sound can be picked up (small change in volume)”. This can be a bit difficult to imagine.
The higher the bit rate, the smoother the waveform lines will be as the sound rises and falls, and the lower the depth of the bit rate, the rougher it becomes.
There are two options, 16-bit or 24-bit. There are also 32 bits at the moment.
Bitrate is likely to make a difference when recording percussion instruments such as drums (instruments with extremely loud volume). Some engineers record in 16-bit from scratch because the sound impression changes when 24-bit drum sound is converted to 16-bit for burning to CD. Unlike the sample rate, this is quite different.
Personal feeling about sample rate and bit rate.
First of all, the sound quality of commonly sold CDs is 16-bit at 44.1 kHz. And, in the professional field, it is often recorded at 24 bits and 48 kHz (which is called Neyonyonpachi). And the human audible range is said to be up to 20 kHz.
With that in mind, it is honestly ridiculous to see and hear something like “This audio interface supports up to XXkHz, so the sound is good …”. Just record at 2448. And there should hardly be any current audio interface model that doesn’t support 2448.
There are audio interfaces that support 192 kHz, but I honestly doubt the idea that the higher the sample rate, the better the sound quality. The basis of recording is to record the desired sound as loud as possible. To record sounds that are far from the human audible range, reducing the proportion of sounds that we really want (of course, sounds that can be heard by the human ear) is what we call high-quality sound. First of all, I think that high frequency sound is nothing more than noise like white noise. If you think that those high frequency sounds are generated by playing musical instruments, it means that the same or louder sounds are generated from fluorescent lamps and all machines, and those sounds are also recorded.
