Sampling rate

Audio sampling

There has been an industry trend towards sampling rates well beyond the basic requirements: such as 96 kHz and even 192 kHz. Even though ultrasonic frequencies are inaudible to humans, recording and mixing at higher sampling rates is effective in eliminating the distortion that can be caused by foldback aliasing. Conversely, ultrasonic sounds may interact with and modulate the audible part of the frequency spectrum (intermodulation distortion), degrading the fidelity. One advantage of higher sampling rates is that they can relax the low-pass filter design requirements for ADCs and DACs, but with modern oversampling delta-sigma-converters, this advantage is less important.