Is 192kHz hi-res audio recording in studio worth it?

[Øyvind Skald 102]

I have seen this video a couple of times. And to be honest I have Dream Theaters self-titled in 96/24 flac files and I cannot hear any different with the CD. But this guy did hear “better sound” in his DAW without knowing why. I don’t know really. I just want to hear what you thing about this so I can get a broader view.

 

 

[Leadfoot 95]

Personally 24/96 is the highest that I go. Any higher than that is too taxing on my system and takes up too much space on my hard drive.

[InstrEd 778]

Yep 24/96 highest I would go to. I'm almost always at 24/44.1 - Good enough for my needs.

[Royal Yaksman 82]

I don't think tracking audio higher than 44.1 gives any audible differences worth chewing memory up. The differences at 96 or higher are mostly in synths that benefit from oversampling. Craig did a good article on it a ways back: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/sonar-upsampling-plug-ins

I personally think audio people need to stop wasting time when they hear minor differences over expensive speaker systems in properly measured studios.

Why?... Because normal people aren't listening on speakers like that. That teenzy bit of extra high end detail isn't going to be heard by 99.99999999999999999% of people, so it's like peeing into the wind and thinking you're responsible for creating rain.

[TheSteven 647]

From what I've read 96k can

• bring out the best in some soft synths, think it has to do with reducing aliasing.
• but some audio interfaces are far from flat at 96k (compared to lower resolutions)
• it eats a lot more disk space.

and I'm not going to hear a difference for acoustic tracks - my ears don't hear 20k.

 

[Tapsa Kuusniemi 67]

I think this really matter only when you work with sound design. When you change sounds heavily the more information you have to manipulate matters. For most other things 48khz is quite enough.

[pwalpwal 205]

if you do a lot of in-the-box processing, the higher the resolution the better, as the maths is more accurate

[synkrotron 311]

24/44.1

 

but wtf do I know...

[cheap_guitar 5]

24/44.1 here too. All that technology and effort to produce the most pristine sound possible, and the end user pulls out their $19.99 earbuds and listens to the stream on Soundcloud.

[pwalpwal 205]

6 minutes ago, cheap_guitar said:

24/44.1 here too. All that technology and effort to produce the most pristine sound possible, and the end user pulls out their $19.99 earbuds and listens to the stream on Soundcloud.

yeah but they're listening to the the master encoded to mp3/whatever, so pre-encoding should be as hi-res as possible, and avoid transcoding... having said that, we've always listened to, for example, abbey road mastered stuff on our cheap hi-fi's, so what's the difference really? that's why we check the final version on multiple systems

[Tapsa Kuusniemi 67]

22 minutes ago, pwalpwal said:

yeah but they're listening to the the master encoded to mp3/whatever, so pre-encoding should be as hi-res as possible, and avoid transcoding... having said that, we've always listened to, for example, abbey road mastered stuff on our cheap hi-fi's, so what's the difference really? that's why we check the final version on multiple systems

But the MP3 would sound so much better on vinyl.

[Philip G Hunt 24]

It really depends on how pro you are.

I make music on a laptop in my house with microphones that cost under €100. Will recording at over 44 make the blindest bit of difference? Not if my room is not treated, my guitar is not top grade, and quite frankly my playing is not the best.

If I was working in a studio with top grade equipment, balanced audio, peerless mics, and amazing musicians...yes, it might well be worth it, to capture all the delicate details of the session.

If you're working in the box with synths etc. It won't make a difference if you start the project at 44, because, as long as there is no wav data, you can switch up later. As long as it's MIDI, it doesn't matter. The issue comes with recording and bouncing tracks.

Ultimately, your audio will only be as good as the source, no matter the sample rate.

[pwalpwal 205]

34 minutes ago, Kuusniemi said:

But the MP3 would sound so much better on vinyl.

i buy vinyl but tend to listen to the included mp3 download... convenience is king

[James Argo 59]

I'm always under assumption, your age determines your sampling rate.... The younger you are, the higher sampling rate you'll record with.
Those over 35yo will stick with whatever your interface telling you as default... Am I right? 🤣

[Philip G Hunt 24]

5 minutes ago, James Argo said:

I'm always under assumption, your age determines your sampling rate.... The younger you are, the higher sampling rate you'll record with.
Those over 35yo will stick with whatever your interface telling you as default... Am I right? 🤣

Cheeky! 😁

...and wrong. 😘

[Royal Yaksman 82]

The funny thing with this kind of stuff is whenever an individual is administering their own tests, they say it's blind and then somehow wind up (mostly) accurately picking a difference. Yet when the tests are administered by a 3rd party and are truly blind. They somehow fail miserably, or pick a difference one day only to be fooled on another day with a similar actual blind test.

This is codswallop in its yawningest form.

I thought about ending it there but for those wondering why I consider this the yawningest? I consider it such because even the people who say that it is better to have the highest quality before it is mixed to mp3 are off base. As the only frequencies that are going to be effected by the oversampling are frequencies that cannot be played back in high quality by the POS listening devices that the end user is going to be using.

But please by all means impress your audio buddies with your 1TB project file.😁

Which actually begs a question! Do these people try to share projects? "Yo dude I just sent you a link to my drop box, you're going to need to start downloading this morning if you hope to start adding to it this afternoon..."

[pwalpwal 205]

6 minutes ago, Royal Yaksman said:

The funny thing with this kind of stuff is whenever an individual is administering their own tests, they say it's blind and then somehow wind up (mostly) accurately picking a difference. Yet when the tests are administered by a 3rd party and are truly blind. They somehow fail miserably, or pick a difference one day only to be fooled on another day with a similar actual blind test.

This is codswallop in its yawningest form.

I thought about ending it there but for those wondering why I consider this the yawningest? I consider it such because even the people who say that it is better to have the highest quality before it is mixed to mp3 are off base. As the only frequencies that are going to be effected by the oversampling are frequencies that cannot be played back in high quality by the POS listening devices that the end user is going to be using.

But please by all means impress your audio buddies with your 1TB project file.😁

Which actually begs a question! Do these people try to share projects? "Yo dude I just sent you a link to my drop box, you're going to need to start downloading this morning if you hope to start adding to it this afternoon..."

mixing in your daw of choice, the more accurate the maths (ie, higher resolution) the more accurate your output will be, it's not an opinion, it's science

[Alan Tubbs 16]

I’ve stuck w/ 22/44 since the time rate conversion could choke a computer.  Never heard a difference, even after many pros went to 96 simply because they could.

[pwalpwal 205]

subjective vs. objective - anyone remember the old 12 bit samplers? you (well, i) can here them, you can hear the digital artifacts! i can't believe we're arguing about this! can you tell the difference between an mp3 and an analog version? https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality?t=1548256131667

[pwalpwal 205]

analog is a smooth curve, whereas digital is a stepped approximation to that