should i use 48khz for my tunes?
 

i've allways done my music in 44khz 16bit, and have never questioned it. But is it better to make them in 48khz nstead? btw,my technical understanding of these things is minimal- i usualy know enough to get by as far as quality, mastering type stuff is concerned. i use cubase sx3

I would say no. I don't think you will gain much by going to 48khz over 44.1 Where you will gain quite a bit is by going from 16bit to 24bit (or 32) - if your audio card can handle it. I could actually hear the difference in my audio when I recorded my external instruments/vox in 24bit vs 16bit !

If you are going to go higher than 44.1, don't bother tracking at 48 because there is going to be little difference in the frequency response and, if anything, your audio is going to be compromised when you do bounce it down to 44.1 for mastering.
If you really want to record at a higher sample rate, try 88.2. Even then, you aren't going to notice much ov a difference and its going to take up twice as much room on your hard drive.
The only reason a sample rate ov 48 was ever popular is because there was a time when people were still tracking with A.D.A.T. and other digital 8-tracks whose host format was 48.
I'd recommend getting a book by Bob Katz called "Mastering Audio" or something to that effect.
Here is the book I'm referring to, its a wealth ov valuable information on digital audio: http://books.google.com/books?id=EBC...with-thumbnail

You can't hear the difference of the sampling... but you can hear aliasing phenomena. So the highest you sample, less aliasing you hear. 48 IS better than 41 and if you downgrade to 41 with a good aliasing suppressor you'll gain some quality. No one can hear over 22 KHz so for the well known theorem you have to use double KHz in sampling. Every KHz more will make you a little more happy.
For acoustic purpouse I always use 48KHz and I'm pretty happy about it when downgrading to 44100... for other kind of recoring I always use 44100 and 24 bit as mentioned before.
Regards, Lorenzo

48kHz is still a standard in the broadcast/media industry...

I have the option of running 88,2 that some say is better than 96 kHz if you plan to downmix to CD quality (44,1 kHz, 16 bit) because half of 88,2 is 44,1 it will be devided by a nice even "2" instead of the more uneven devision of "2,176870748299319727891156462585". This will in your case mean that you devide by "1,0884353741496598639455782312925" instead of just doing it in 44,1 kHz from the start. It makes sence to me but still this is pure theory and i really don´t know if you will be able to hear the diffenrence. Still Doc is right when saying go to 24 or 32 bits instead of 16. This will give you a lot more than 48 kHz will...

Yes this is the theory... but I can assure you that 96 KHz is far better than 88.2, you practically have no aliasing cos there are only a few instruments with harmonics at those frequencies... and probably the aliasing would fall over the 22 KHz so you can't hear it.

so what exactly are you talking about ? Samples ? Or recording your full mixdown ?

when i'm using samples (what is very unusually for me, but sometimes it's just necessary) 44khz 16bit is enough for me, in the most cases - but when it goes to recording the full mixdown or a live-set on stage 96Khz 24bit is the better choice imo.

48Khz will lead no real benefit. You'd be far better off using 24bit 44.1khz....

If you have a cut down version of cubaseor something....it'll probably let you use 24bit, 48khz......but dont get obsessed by these figures. Whats really important is that you have decent quality converters. If your on a real budget then I highly recommend either the Emu 0404 or Audiophile 24/96 sound cards for audio recording.

DS

you can't say this, bit and khz will affect different sound "components":
more KHz = less aliasing
more dB = less digital noise (related to the amp of the sound)

so, you can sample at 44100 but you should put an anti aliasing (low pass filter) at the half freq (in this case 22 KHz) but not after the Digital conversion of the sound... so we should ask our audio device manufacturer if it has a filter related to the sampling frequency, if not you'll have aliasing.
The higher (in this case 48 ) KHz we will use the less liasing we will have, than converting, every software I know has an antialiasing plugin to digitally correct the problem when downgrading to 44100 ... 48KHz downgraded to 44100 after a aliasing filter is ALWAYS better than the straight 44100 recording.