MOTM

On Feb 7, 2004, at 12:32 PM, Paul Haneberg wrote:
>  ----- Original Message -----
>  I still am not a fan of higher sample rates.  Most higher sample 
> rates sound
>  better because the lowpass filter is at a higher frequency so there 
> are less
>  phase artifacts in the audible range, not because the sample rate is 
> higher.
>  IMHO there is no useful information contained in the sound above 20Khz
>  because you can't hear it. What you don't hear on higher sampling 
> rates is
>  the high end phase smear caused by the filters in the converters.  The
>  higher rates make the sound seem to have more air or to be crisper, 
> but
>  again this is just the lack of phase smear.

Rupert Neve would disagree with you.  I went to a evening talk at my 
local pro audio shop where he talked about this subject.  He tells this 
story about a client he had when he was building consoles that was 
complaining about the new board he just got.  He couldn't tell what was 
wrong but something was really bugging him.  They checked out every 
component on the board and couldn't find anything wrong.  Then he 
figured out that the high end slop for this board was different than 
previous models.   Seems they rolled off the high end at a lower 
frequency than the earlier models.  The roll off was still above 
hearing range.

I can't remember the numbers but the roll off was way above our normal 
hearing range.  He is a strong believer that there is a lot of content 
up there were we can't hear that does seem to make a difference on the 
overall sound.

Having said that, my personal feeling is that it really depends on the 
material you work with.  Classical music with all the dynamic range and 
tonal timbers would seem to be content that would benefit from 192k 
sample rate.  For the music I produce and write, I really doubt that it 
would matter that much.  The other thing is that I'm not even close to 
being able to convert my studio to work with anything above 48k.  I 
also agree with you that the quality of the converters is the key 
factor.

- chris