It's taken me forever, but I finally checked out console 8. Whew boy, it's neat! After using it, I watched Chris' video explaining what it does and it made total sense. However, I'm generally doing 44.1k and he was saying some of the qualities of it aren't going to be used on anything less than 96k.

I've heard so much conflicting information on sample rates. It seems, 44.1k is going to be plenty of headroom for most people. Does anyone here use 48k or 96k sample rates? If so, why?

cakes wrote: Wed Jan 10, 2024 7:33 am I've heard so much conflicting information on sample rates. It seems, 44.1k is going to be plenty of headroom for most people. Does anyone here use 48k or 96k sample rates? If so, why?

I gradually moved up to 96k within the last decade because

1. storage and transfer rates are no longer a significant concern
2. while I have difficulty hearing much of a difference between individual tracks done at different rates, for many channels of plugins and summing the differences might start to add up. I haven't done any deep dive comparisons though so this is largely a 'playing it safe' practice.

So probably more of the first point.

cakes wrote: Wed Jan 10, 2024 7:33 am I've heard so much conflicting information on sample rates. It seems, 44.1k is going to be plenty of headroom for most people. Does anyone here use 48k or 96k sample rates? If so, why?

I moved to 48K/24bit about 15 years ago because "why not?" The file size from 44.1 to 48K is inconsequential for storage and processing even back in the 2010's and became the deliverable standard for video so why not jump on the minor boost in quality. I've dabbled in 96k from time to time. Back when I switched totally to 48K (maybe 2006-8ish) I would definitely see some CPU issues especially if I had a bunch of reverb plugins or something, and to my ears, it only sounded a little better and only on really sparse quiet music. Never had a complaint with 48K so I just kinda stuck with it. Antialiasing and oversampling is so good these days I don't see any reason to jump up the rate.

I'm still able to crap out my relatively new and decent CPU at 24/48 so the idea of going any higher than that seems counterproductive.
My understanding is that any perceived/theoretical benefits past 24/48 are only applicable to things like the aliasing effects on certain software synths.

penningtron wrote: Wed Jan 10, 2024 9:09 am

cakes wrote: Wed Jan 10, 2024 7:33 am I've heard so much conflicting information on sample rates. It seems, 44.1k is going to be plenty of headroom for most people. Does anyone here use 48k or 96k sample rates? If so, why?

I gradually moved up to 96k within the last decade because

1. storage and transfer rates are no longer a significant concern
2. while I have difficulty hearing much of a difference between individual tracks done at different rates, for many channels of plugins and summing the differences might start to add up. I haven't done any deep dive comparisons though so this is largely a 'playing it safe' practice.

So probably more of the first point.

Do you do dithering for bounces down sample rates? Or do you let the mastering engineer deal with it?

Does dither apply to sample rates? I thought that was only bit length. But regardless, I try to keep things at the same rate across the whole project, including the delivery format at this point. (Apple, and probably others, support and even recommend 24/96. CMS has a write up about this, I'll try and find it*)

*ok it's not as informative as I remembered, but I used the 24/96 masters for Distrokid and Bandcamp as well.

It includes 16- and 24-bit WAV, as well as 320 kbps MP3 files. The folder labeled “WAV 24 96 ADM” contains files that comply with the Apple Digital Masters criteria (formerly Mastered for iTunes). Please use these files for Apple Music delivery, as well as any Digital Distributor who will accept High-Definition (HDA) files. Some digital streaming platforms will prefer the 16-bit, 44.1 kHz files.

penningtron wrote: Wed Jan 10, 2024 11:55 am Does dither apply to sample rates? I thought that was only bit length.

Yes, I think you're right actually.

cakes wrote: Wed Jan 10, 2024 12:29 pm

penningtron wrote: Wed Jan 10, 2024 11:55 am Does dither apply to sample rates? I thought that was only bit length.

Yes, I think you're right actually.

I have never and will never add dither to a mix down and have never heard with my own ears any reason to do it at all. Even if I'm going from 24 to 16 bit (haven't done that for any really reason on maybe like 8+ years). I've never experienced any mal artifacts from not adding noise shaping or any of that stuff. I think DAWS just handle it for you these days, either way, I cant hear any issues.

If your DAW is running 32 bit word-length processing and then does a final truncation to 24 bit when you output the file, then dithering is inaudible. Dither impacts the least significant bits in the word length. For a 24 bit word, that's -144 dB. I call BS on people who claim they can actually hear that.

Going down to 16 bit is a different story. That's -96 dB, which is audible by many people.

Nate Dort wrote: Wed Jan 10, 2024 1:50 pm For a 24 bit word, that's -144 dB. I call BS on people who claim they can actually hear that.

We probably can't hear the dither noise at all, but we all hear differences between the 24-bit varieties in Ditherbox. Or having it on in a 24-bit mode vs having it bypassed.

This is subtle stuff for sure—I hope I didn't come off all YouTube-style like "This One MISTAKE is RUINING your MIXES," I just thought it was good info—but it's no more made-up than hearing differences between Big Muff/Rat variants or something.