I’ve been wondering is a lot. Since most of my plugins, Serum, Nexus 2, VPS Avenger, PadShop Pro, etc. they are somewhat sample based and use .wav sound files to create sounds at least partially. Also I am using some hihat and snare samples and small vocals, they are also in 44.1khz.
So my question is, do I benefit if I use higher sample rate than 44.1 in my projects? Doesn’t the DAW have to upscale the samples in some form? Can sound quality go worse because of this? I really don’t know much about techical stuff, so far I’ve been using 44.1 and i’ve been happy, but I would always like to do music in best quality as I can.
Higher sample rates generally mean better audio quality in terms of clarity. But for most purposes 44.1Hz is a good enough. If you’d still like to go higher, 48kHz would be a reasonable option but typically going higher than that doesn’t really gain you much for audio production.
General Rule of Thumb:
44.1kHz = CD quality
48kHz is a more reasonable choice for Video Production projects
Any sample rate higher than 48kHz isn’t going to buy you much of an audible difference for audio production but there are those who simply opt for the higher rates for whatever reason.
Few things to keep in mind though:
- Higher sampling rates mean larger audio files
- Whatever sampling rate you set when you start a project should be the one you use for its entirety. Don’t try switching gears after the project has started or you can get weird results.
The rule is a little different when considering sample rates for emulated VST instruments. There higher sampling rates will generally result in a better emulation of an instruments and better defined quality in the clarity of the sound.