Why Super High Resolution Audio Makes No Sense 

I'm 55 years old, and greatful that I can hear 14 kHz

It's so refreshing to watch this.. logical, sensible, reasoned advice. Thank you!

Audiophile nonsense has entered the chat. If your amp didn't cost more than my house, and if the knobs aren't made of bubinga, are you really trying hard enough?

Excellent, excellent video explaining the trivial quest for high res. I've played with various rates in my DAW and have not heard differences. Now I understand why. Thanks, Justin; my hard drives appreciate you....

Exactly correct. As a digital signal processing expert, I deal with this situation every day. With modern antialiasing filtering, reconstruction algorithms etc higher sample rates does not matter. 16 bit vs 24 bit resolution only changes the effective signal to noise ratio the systems can support. 16 bit supports 65535 slicing levels. 24 bit supports 16,777,216 slicing levels. Hence 16 bit supports 96 dB SNR where 24 bit supports a SNR OF 144 dB.

All my music is “mixed for bats 🦇”... “can I have a dollar now?” 😎

I will say though, one advantage of using higher bit depths is that it can save a take if you realize (too late) that one of the mics wasn't amp'd enough, and you can't take another take, having that lower noise floor, from what I've seen anyways, allows you to really amplify the signal in the mix without getting any noticeable noise. But admittedly, that is a pretty specific usage, that happens because of user error to begin with. (edit) the whole thing about audio being better when treated less preciously is precisely why people seem to prefer vinyls & tape, even in today's day and age, I work in digital graphic arts, and it's really the same, often in digital artworks you want to add 'noise' and irregularities into artwork, that usually always makes it pop more, and gives it character

Very good summary, I totally agree!👍 Especially concerning our golden time of audio quality! Unfortunately I can't imagine what we can expect from future developments🤔. The great leaps in improving audio quality are behind us. But luckily we are now able to concentrate fully in our creativity without be concerned about quality - even at home! I remember recording on noisy tapes in the 80ies. Everything today was science fiction at those times (a DAW running on an tablet!!!)

Neil Young and Robert Fripp are suiting up for battle.

No, people always use Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem to say you only need to sample twice the highest frequency you want to record i.e. in Audio you only need 40kHz. But did not understand the whole theorem. The theorem also said you need to multiple every sample to a infinite function call sinc function to be able to recover the same wave form. The important word is "infinite function". It is impossible to calculate infinite function because that would take infinite time. So you always need to stop some where just like when you use Pi. Higher sample frequency will make calculation many times near to "infinite function". So same DAC chip with same computing power suppose to have easier time with higher sample rate in theory.

It's worth repeating, as you mention, that capture and delivery are very different things. For example, Zoom just released a sound recorder that records 32-bit float (the F2 lavalier recorder). The huge benefit of that is that it's impossible to blow out the recording as it doesn't peak at 0dB, and levels don't need to be set. You just hit record and you're golden. Once the sound is captured, that 32-bit float just becomes 32-bit bloat (you heard me). Recording headroom is just recording headroom. The end listener doesn't need to hear the empty headroom, and won't benefit one iota from doing so.

My dog has been upsampling my music. I am pissed.

I really appreciate you taking the time to explain this in a way a layman like myself can understand. I was finding myself obsessing a bit on trying to get these higher bitrates and it was frustrating. I am at peace now with how things truly work. Especially someone like me who listens to music on bluetooth!

I always record in 48 kHz/24 for two simple reasons. 1. All my gear supports 48 kHz, so whatever interface I choose to use it’s working with 48 kHz. 2. If the recordings will be used in a video I will have a perfect sample match. If you use 44.1 kHz with a 24 FPS video each frame will have 1837,5 samples, so if I cut both the video & audio when the grid in PT is set to frame the cut will be between two samples. This is avoided with 48 kHz. So, that’s my approach, I use 48 kHz for practical reasons, not audible.

Absolutely BRILLIANT tutorial! Thank you so much for sharing this knowledge!

Thanks so much for clearing this up. A while ago I did the 320kbps mp3 vs wav test and could not hear a difference at all... With high grade converters and headphones! I thought my ears were to blame.

If you're a music listener, you're not going to hear an improvement going from 320 kbps MP3 to lossless FLAC. Save the hard drive space and invest in better equipment (headphones, amps, speakers, etc.)

The fact that you had no uptake on your listening challenge from 10 years ago is very telling.

Another well-reasoned and delightfully delivered info download! Thanks, Justin!

Brilliant. Anybody interested in music should watch this.. and understand it.

You are right. There's not much a point for super Hi res other than selling really expensive gear to people who don't know any better. The one advantage I'm seeing is you have a lot of very affordable devices coming into the market which offer tremendous quality. I'm speaking of desktop dacs costing less than 200$. And current audio is getting way better than it was 10 years or 20 years back

Thank you. Thank you. I’ve been dealing with these toks my entire life.

Yeah, and here are two conceptual things that are often misunderstood: 1. There are no stair steps. Digital audio is entirely smooth, continuous, and analog once it goes through the low-pass filter. That’s the whole point of the filter, is it turns everything at the upper frequencies into pure, smooth sine waves, filtering out all the squareness (which are just the upper partials). 2. It only takes two samples to accurately reconstruct any given sine wave at or below that frequency, perfectly in terms of frequency, amplitude, and phase. Sine waves have a particular shape such that you can mathematically reconstruct the whole thing just from the two samples.

I noticed when I converted some of my masters to mp3 the mp3 file sounded more scratchy bright than the same track with a 24 bit wav. It was noticeably different in the high frequencies. After some trial and error I eventually fixed the problem by applying a high cut filter to the inaudible high frequencies in the track. From this I surmised that these inaudible frequencies were being mapped to audible frequencies by the mp3 codec. I’m not saying that high definition audio is superior because it handles frequencies, but rather curious why this happens? Why does the mp3 dithering not handle the mapping more gracefully?

Thank you for interjecting some reason and science into this area. On a somewhat related note, I've noticed that many people equate "pristine" audio with detail. But audio that is very revealing of detail is not necessarily perceived as musical or all that pleasing to the ear. (I came across at least one blind study that arrived at the same conclusion).

Man, I'm 34 and I still use a tascam 4 track cassette recorder and a Alesis 3630 compressor for my music, and people that hear it don't tell me, nobody will like your music because it was recorded on a tascam cassette recorder and a Alesis 3630 compressor

Great video. I’ve had the same concerns myself and you properly articulated why. The best ever hifi upgrade I did was buy a Nord One Up amp. This was a game changer for my PMC OB1s speakers. I have heard differences between formats but not in ABX tests. What I mean is the Linn 96/24 for example sound great but think the real reason is the the audience for these are people who care about music and the producers bother to mix the tracks well in the studio. i.e. don’t dynamically compress the music. Place instrument well etc. It’s not the format it’s the production. Madonna immaculate conception on cd sound just as “interesting” and alive as any 96/24 recording do.

Its NOT just about what frequency you can hear up to. If you can't hear it your equipment might not be up to snuff, or youtube, or BG noise is masking the sound. This discussion totally ignores the psycho-acoustic dimension as well as harmonic granularity.

When he played the 15k sound at 8:23 I thought there was something wrong with my headphones

I'm going to be getting theoretical here but what the heck; I get aggravated, too. Much of this presentation is based on a common misunderstanding of Nyquist's sampling theorem regarding the reconstruction of a signal that has been sampled at anything strictly more than twice the highest frequency present (the "Nyquist rate"), and a common misunderstanding of the frequency content of audio as based on Fourier analysis. Nyquist reconstruction only works if the signal has a limited frequency spectrum but, according to Fourier, any signal that is of finite duration has an infinitely wide frequency spectrum, thus Nyquist reconstruction does not apply to music. Even a pure sinusoid of limited duration has an infinite frequency spectrum (I suspect many audio folks don't realize this); only a sinsuid that started at -infinity and runs to +infinity has a frequency spectrum that looks like a spike. Just imagine any three evenly spaced samples of a single cycle of a sinusoid, around the Nyquist rate. According to the video, you can reconstruct it but there's not a chance. Further, Nyquist's reconstruction requires the availability of every sample to reconstruct any point of the original waveform. So, even if the sampling rate wasn't an issue for a signal that somehow had a limited frequency spectrum, you couldn't reconstruct anything in real time from a digital input stream. You'd have to wait for the entire song to download before you could even start playback. Our digital audio realities are fine but I get aggravated when I hear theories that don't apply being crushed to explain how things work. And while I agree that our hearing just isn't good enough to benefit from high resolution audio, I think a distinction has to be made between (1) what difference high resolution processing makes when it's used throughout the entire recording chain, and (2) what difference high resolution audio makes just for the final output. I suspect high res makes a significant difference in the first case especially if a lot of processing is used, if for no other reason than cumulative errors (resulting in unwanted artifacts) are minimized, but the evidence is in regarding the second. We just cant hear the difference.

Great discussion/explanation...... thanks for putting these concepts into their correct context.....

This is a very fin topic. Someone should have a discussion with the hi-fi (consumer) industry about this and then with the audiophile listeners using converters at 768 sample rates when listening to lower sample rate files.

I'd like to point out a big missconception here: quality matters if it's higher or lower sample rate, the lower sample rate the lower the quality that is a scientific fact judging by how the quantization works. The big point that all seem to miss is that beyond 44.1kHz one would not be able to tell the difference and basically is pointless to have so much storage space spent for nothing.

Good talk. As a matter of fact, nothing touches say, a 2" Studer and a vintage Neve console. Of course also the old outboard gear. There's a reason for all the modeling algorithms of that vintage analog gear. Yes, analog has a "smearing". But, digital lacks some body that analog has. Meant to mention. There's nothing like the saturation sound of hitting 2" tape really hard.

i agree about your main point, but i can definitely hear the quality difference between full cd and 320kb mp3.

Justin, loved it. Three questions: . A famed producer (I believe it was Aerosmith's producer said that excessively high resolution audio was allowing us to hear details in the original recording that weren't there and therefore were a bad thing. True/false? . Jimmy Page said the Zeppelin catalog was recording at such fidelity it's future-proofed for years (or more to come). Page specifically said for future "higher audio standards," which as they're in the future don't yet exist. True/false? . I thought the sound on VHS was/is pretty groovy. Isn't VHS tape a NON digital format? Hence, the sound is 16 bit which as you noted no one can really distinguish from 24 bit. Hence, analog can reproduce in the instance of VHS sound as close to the source as digital? Not a trick question. P.S. I think one big misconception you blew-up in this video, is that if you record say, a giraffe making a sound at a zoo - whatever sound they make at 16 bits and you record it at 32 bits - most folks, including many professionals, believe that at 32 bits of 'resolution' you'll hear greater fidelity with 32 bits. You'll hear a better sounding giraffe, as well as the sound of garbage rustling on the ground. A better wind sound. Maybe human speech, better, from visitors to the giraffe enclosure.

Years ago, I was tracking thru 18bit motorola converters. I was dropping the teac four Trac drum tracks down to digital. I noticed it sounded much more like the tape in 24bit than sixteen bit my sampling rate was 44.1 in both cases. I learned 24bit is better for resolution. However I had to mix down to 16 bit digital in this case. My hardware could only handle 16 in the multitrack window.

Thank you Justin, this comforts me in my unashamed attitude of "If it sounds good, it's good"! I have a question about the "Air Band" on Maag plugins, I really like the "brightness-not-harshness" it allows my 58 years old ears to perceive and appreciate on instruments and mixes. I usually use 4-7dB @ 20k and only recently used 15k on the EQ2, should we be cautious of unheard frequencies causing aliasing generated by the plugin at 20 or 40k?

Here is a blind test that will change your mind, Justin. Listen to a 320k vs. a wav or flac (create both from the best same source) of The War on Drugs' "Lost in the Dream." I have, and for a fact, I can tell you there is a specific character that shows the difference. I challenge you to notice it, it can be deciphered in the first minute of the song. Another stunning mix was Morning Phase, equally decipherable. The sense of detail and SPACE that is destroyed by 320k is obvious to me, at least. Most won't notice, so don't stress, that is true. But when you personally want the best, why not go ahead and mix for that. Try to hear it, try to make it.

I wish I knew half of what you talking about. Really just wanted to know if I wasting money with tidal Master plan. If hi - fi would have been adequate. Or if I'm just imaging Spotify not sounding good from my system.. Last two mins most useful for me. Listen to what works for you. Sound advice

First time watching your videos. So relatable. I’ll watch all today and all my family members and neighbours will too 😂. Thanks a lot

Try as I might I have yet to be able to hear the difference between cd quality and the high res audio, which could explain why sa-cds never took off. I’ll have to try the MP3 320k to see, but I know that at 256k I can tell but it’s really difficult.

I enjoy your explanation. BRAVO

Well done on this video! I have been singing this same song for years on forums and with students. As a delivery medium, why do you need more than 100dB of dynamic range? (dithered 16 bit). The part I think many still struggle with, and I can see it in some of the comments here, is not understanding the bit depth of a session. (Speaking about Pro Tools here, but I believe other DAWs are similar). If set my session to 16 bit and fill it with 16 bit files, we are not operating in a 16 bit world. Every DAW these days has at least , a 32 bit floating mix engine. You are mixing and outputting a 32 bit signal IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT IT MIGHT BE MADE UP OF 16 OR 24 BITS FILES. The bit depth of the session only relates to the bit depth of any files you record into the session or any files you import that require conversion.

Apparently you’ve never heard of noise shaping filters as it applies to bitmapping. Dsd sounds remarkably different than an mp3. Maybe your speakers aren’t able to show you what you’re missing.

I was running this video in background, and that 15kHz startled me, I thought something was wrong with my head. Anyways, it was mathematically proven that you only need double sample rate of what your maximum recorded frequency is, and that would give you accurate reproduction. Any errors in audio are not likely and negligible. Search for Nyquist theorem. 44.1 sample rate can be used to reproduce frequencies up to 22.05kHz. Only a few people, if any at all, can perhaps hear that. Noise for dogs.

I remember converting the black album cd in the '00 to various kbps mp3, starting from 32kbps to a variable which at that time was up to 220 kbps I think. And the sound depended a lot of the speakers. In the PC starting from 128 kbps sounded good, but in the hifi equipment to a properly bass sound must had be the variable, not less. Even if actual 320 kbps mp3 is said to be enough, I consider quality cd, be WAV, be FLAC, etc, the most honest format to sell music, just in case, the original, nothing removed.

Higher sample rates introduce less latency when monitoring natively via the DAW. Once tracked at high sample rate for low latency, there is no need to introduce sample rate conversion, which will cause degradation.

I think there is a better low bitrate formats than the mp3 like m4a aac, ogg, because the spectral analysis sometimes shows that some mp3 converters screw up the songs by cutting too much frequencies. So you still get 320kbps but in reality it's less.

FYI, RU-vid processing adds an incredibly steep low pass filter at 15kHz. Some older vids may have one at 18kHz, but it seems like they lowered it a few years ago.

So, Justin, I see you've changed back to another JZ Mic which looks like the V67! Nice choice! As for the topic, I really enjoyed listening to this and your perspective. I have to admit that I was somewhat of a numbers-fan and thought that bigger meant better. However, after listening to you it made sense to me in that you really won't hear the difference on the listening end of the sound. And I'm convinced that you need some really high-quality headphones to even attempt it....if you can. I've tried and didn't hear a difference. I am going to have to do some really close comparisons when I do get a chance to see if I can capture the differences between the two resolutions. Again, thanks for this video Justin!

Thanks for this post! I’d love to hear your perspective on apple digital masters, I feel like they sound better but I don’t know the engineering behind it.

One benefit of using 96 instead of 48 at recording is the AD converters allow me better headroom. Not sure how to explain this in technical terms other than what I see when I clip the sound at 48 compared to 96. Another benefit of higher sample rates is signal latency. Although I've never considered 96 being “super high resolution.”

The other thing is that although we do have the best audio formats available to consumers now, they don't listen to music in any way to take advantage of them. Phone speakers? Laptop speakers? Alexa speakers? People aren't really even listening in stereo.

24/44.1 the way I roll... Thanks Justin - Cheers, mvh

Thank you. Your video helped me staying with Spotify for the UI, multi-platforms (Connect) and international songs selections. Honestly tried Apple Music and Tidal and just not getting any additional benefits.

Outstanding info and delivery!

This is not right. If you record and playback a sound that is 4k on an 8k system you are subject to huge aliasing issues. There is always a filter to roll off the top frequencies so they don't reflect down

Thank you very much. Now I can stop searching for "better sound" that I cannot hear and stick with my humble music streamer and Cambridge Audio.

Love your content bro. I'm 28 years old and can hear clearly from 30hrz to 22khz. I tried many app from play store and that's my hearing rage. However that higher frequency I perceive them as noise.

I do a lot of sound design and multiple renders of audio. Stretching, bouncing etc and have recorded at 96k for the last 12 years for that reason. Also my clients want 48k almost 100% of the time so the conversion is seamless this way. I think some of the “myths” of higher SR are leftovers from when converters weren’t as good (maybe), like early aughts. But if you really wanna hear a marked improvement, get a master clock. That was an eye-opener. I run 96/24 with Lynx Auroras and a Big Ben-that’s enough! But this video gets into consumer habits, and listening-and I agree. CD is fine and I really prefer vinyl. But it’s apples and oranges comparing processing digital audio with delivery specs vs listening to music. My .02.

Well illustrated, on top of all that we should consider the frecuency response of microphones (good old SM57 does not go over 15 kHz), preamps, etc. Just saying,

My argument for using 24 or 32 bit float is just headroom, I can record really quiet sources and then gain them up and compress the living shit out of them and the noise doesn't come into that audible range. For consumer side I go 48/24 because it is standard for video.

Most of the difference to music quality appears to be down to the recording and mastering process, in my personal experience. While 320 kbps MP3 might be hard to distinguish from 16/44.1 FLAC... I wonder whether that's not really dependent on the hardware to a good degree. The better setup, the easier the perception of transients and hence space, distance etc., might be. I can for sure tell that the quality difference between streamin of something lossy like through Spotify versus lossless like through Tidal, is night and day, in clear favor of the latter. That is though probably also mostly due to Tidal sourcing the tracks much better. I've been custom-upsampling (like 64M taps sinc filter using SoX) my FLACs to 24/96 (for my phone) and 24/768 (for my home setup) because it gives me a bit more refined, clearer and smoother highs, which I actually hear the difference in (although the differences are kind of subtle, they won't really hit one in the face), and that's comparing FLACs, and even that on mid-fi equipment, nothing that breaks the bank. MP3 is really out of the picture there. Sorry for not having done the double blind test experiments! Will for sure try that though.

Great video, however I’m super disappointed you never mentioned anything about system latency at higher sample rate.. it’s dramatically reduced as you go higher which is so much better for recording esp say on my fully weighted piano controller. That makes sense for me to run at 96k and the main reason I do. I have a 16 core and 32gb and a 2TB SSD so works well. I read a lot about plugins based on analog gear and saturation works/sounds better at high sample rate. It was super scientific and a bit over my head something about harmonic distortion stuff or cross over, I’m not sure But seems to sound better to me On things that are distorted for what ever reason.

I’m not being obtuse. So you’re saying there is NO sonic quality difference between a cassette and a CD? There is no sonic quality difference between an MP3 and a Binaural?

I find the only benefit of hi-res releases are that the albums normally receive a better mix, Metallica's Death Magnetic is a great example... the retail CD is a brick walled mess victim of the loudness war and due to the compression it's actually tiring to listen to it, the 24bit/88.2khz hi-res release just sounds better due to the mix and lack of compression, so I just converted the flac files to 16bit/44.1khz and burnt myself a CD that sounds better than the one I parted with cash for..

You're sorta right and sorta wrong. When testing my fave synth at 2441 and 2496, I was shocked at the difference in clarity. Always good to start at the highest possible quality and then Downsville, if needed ... that's my 2 1/2 cents.

Thank you, Justin , this podcast has changed my view on everything))

I listen to MP3s on an almost 20 year old Zune with Beyerdynamic studio monitor headphones and the sound quality is flat out amazing. 44.100/16bit is more than enough to capture and reproduce sound that humans can hear and a good ripped Mp3 sounds nearly identical.

Totally agree. In fact I could perfectly record at 16 bit and be really happy.

Exactly what i been looking for

Great video and description of the whole high sample rate argument and how it reflects to the quality of the sound. It also explains why my interface sounds better at 48khz and up. There is an endless thread on GearSpace on the whole subject.

I have 100s of classical cds at 16 41k. The biggest difference I can hear is not in the quality of the amplifier, the DA converter, the headphones, the full tube amp, the toroidal transformer... It's in the microphones, mic placement, instruments, studio preamps and mastering. I do think a small difference is gained however in SACD.

so maybe you use spotify becouse you don´t hear the diferrence with tidal

Great info, thanks!

I think we should all consider that when listening to pure tones as hearing tests it doesn’t reflect the real world where tones are combined. It’s the simultaneous interaction between frequencies, even the frequencies that are considered outside of the range of human hearing because of single frequency hearing tests primarily, that can get very interesting so to speak in this conversation.

I've been saying for quite a long time, anything beyond 24-bit 48kHz (chose this really only because it's what you'd see on DVD's and Blu-Rays) is useless outside of production environments.

Thank you I just discovered your channel, this was a great video!!

Excellent

I swear that CD's sound slightly fuller in the low end to me in my car vs. me playing the same album on Spotify on my phone using an AUX cord. I have no idea how much of this is just placebo or if there's something else at play, such as the DAC in my phone or whatever.

another win for Justin C!!! Great resolution analysis sir!!!

Hold on... if I'm understanding this correctly: I can record a VO using a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, and I can do the same reading in another recording at 48 kHz, and the only real difference is that some of the higher frequencies (which annoy me anyway) won't be there in the 44.1 kHz?? Or have I misunderstood?

I use to bounce my music from Cubase (6) to a 44.1kHz/16Bit wave file, then drag it onto my iPod mini, go out to smoke a cigarette and gaze into the distance. It occured more than once to me, that I was bouncing out an 320kBps MP3 and was not aware of it. The funny thing is: That iPod makes it a blind test without my provision - it doesn't show or tell you in any way which format is being played back. BUT: My nearly 40 years old ears seem to reveal it - whenever I listen to one of my productions and I have the feeling it's not uncompressed sound... guess what: In fact it would be compressed, really. I would yet have to fail on that one to conclude an MP3 sounds just as good as a PCM. But don't get me wrong: I agree wholehartedly to what you say in this video.

flac is lossless. A great mathematical data compression trick. I remember it translating even highest samplerates lossless in audio information. The rest I enjoyed a lot.

Great, informative video !

i can notice the difference between mp3 320 and the cd track via a RME dac and monitor audio pl200 floor standing speakers ,only very slight differences ,because i listened to the Cd ,i prefer it ,otherwise if I just have the mp3 file ,i wouldn't complain .

I use tune in and very happy with it, and it's free on my onkyo

Hey man SUPER VIDEO !!! I thought how strange he says a frequency and I hear it, it is early in the morning and while enjoying a cup of tea and coffee I first listen to EWF Shining Star, All About Love, Yearin Learin, at a low volume level , to also train my hearing .. and check where Mick Guzauski pops up .. but yesterday this video of you also put my checklist ... ha ha ha I thought I can hear it well played back 3x yesss I hear it everyone ;-) thanks for the unconscious test.

i don't seem to hear anything above 16khz. when i was a boy having equipment that had frequency range up to 12khz was quite good. and everything sounded just fine - percussion etc. for example a sharp boombox. or a turntable with a built in amplifier. they sounded just fine.

Genuine question. I heard somewhere that 96k is a requirement for film sound/music. 1. Is that true? 2. What benefits (for film) does it give to have audio in such high resolution?

Sorry, but I still feel ripped off when I buy a wav download or CD only to find the music has been mastered from mp3. This has happened to me numerous times. It's really shocking when it's a major label doing it. No way does mp3 sound as good as wav.

Was going to down vote this but you actually talk about aliasing/mirroring and low pass filters. I'm also surprised you also talk about noise and headroom on audio interfaces with higher bitrates. That's more then 90% of the RU-vidrs out there.

This should be a mandatory lesson for anyone trying to understand digital audio. At least now I know I'm not crazy after reading the audiophile garbage everywhere. The marketing has gotten out of control & sadly pushes over taxed hardware basically to scam consumers. 32bit float @ 192Khz even for most science is insane, But if you need Auto Tune on every song "Go For it" Clearly cheaper than actual lessons on how to stay in key. In my experience going from 16bit to 24bit was a great improvement - Beyond that I can't tell the difference - at least not with a decent recording. Yet the Audiophile branding just keeps pushing the envelope "I think They-- They whom ever They are-- Have flown the koo koo's nest. The test of who's audio sweep sounds better than the next -- Great I'm 50 & still stuck hearing an 18 & 19 Khz whistle out of $10K speakers being sold as "THESE are the Golden Turd" VS my old Polk Audio's I've been mixing with for 30+ years. GTFO.... This vid IS true Factual Gold THANK YOU... Also helps be understand why the headphone market is so wacked as well.

End consumers getting the file in the same format it was recorded/mixed avoids a Sample Rate Conversion, which can mean less degradation. Higher sample rates give a more accurate trace of the analog/electrical wave form.

This is super interesting Justin. It means I can start a 44khz project in my DAW instead of a 48khz one and use the CPU and RAM saved for distortion, analog emulation, etc to make it all sound more interesting. My main concern would be the Nyquist frequency: when using certain plugins that may not have a resampling option, working at 44khz would be worse than doing so at 48khz as some artifacts would be more noticeable and hard to clean up? Thanks a lot for this episode!

yeah really the only thing a higher sample rate accomplishes is less aliasing, i always export in 48k for that. but in all honesty my mixes are what need the most work

Last week I switched to high sample rate for my mixing template. Not for that "super high quality" sound (actually when the files were recorded at 48kHz than they CAN NOT be converted to higher samples rates with all that extra information) but for the digital processing I use. Some of them have oversampling but some simply don't. And those plugs which don't have oversampling CAN achieve a more accurate harmonic saturation/distortion. It depends on how well the plug-in was coded. So the sampling rate of my project is high but my exported file is still 16Bit 44.1kHz/48kHz. The only downside is the processing power - but hey with this "trick" you convince yourself using less plug-ins 😉

To me... Other than Sample Libraries or Bats... The Higher Sample rates are best for Audio Restoration where you are capturing Archived Media... and Forensic Audio

But if a want compose music for superman?