Ultimately, Hi-Res audio formats produce a higher fidelity that has to be experienced to truly appreciate. Having a higher bit depth also creates a lower noise floor, meaning less noise in the audio to reduce quality. The extra bits add a lot of depth and detail to the audio. Same thing with bit depth, more is definitely better.ĬD-quality audio is 16 bit, while Hi-Res formats are 24 bit or greater. It’s like moving from standard definition video to HD, having more pixels to define the images makes everything clearer and closer to the original. The more bits you have, the greater the detail. The bit depth tells you how many bits are used to define each one of those audio samples. (Again, we’re not talking about bitrate here, bit depth is different). In my opinion, far more important than sampling rate is the audio’s bit depth. There is a lot of research on the topic that you can dive into if interested. There is also hot debate whether ultra-sonic frequencies can be “sensed” even if they are not heard. Moving the filter cutoff further outside the audible band has a positive impact on sound quality. Yes, but using a higher sampling rate shifts the Nyquist frequency up, which in turn means that the system’s low pass filter cutoff (the max frequency that can be reproduced) is also higher. CD quality audio is limited to 22,050 Hz, while Hi-Res audio can produce out to 48,000 Hz or higher.īut can’t human ears only hear up to 20,000 Hz? Due to something called the Nyquist Theorem (which I will not get into here, go ahead and Google it if you want to nerd out) your highest frequency is always limited to your sampling rate divided by 2. More samples per second means the audio has a higher resolution, and the audio can contain higher frequencies. CD-quality audio (typical for most standard music, games, movies) for example uses a sampling rate of 44,100 Hz, or 44,100 samples per second, whereas Hi-Res formats use 96,000 or higher, so more than double! Audio sampling rate (in Hertz - Hz) tells you how many samples per second are played, so the higher the number, the greater the resolution. Each one of these audio snapshots is called a sample. Just like digital video is made up of a series of still images played quickly enough that you see them as continuous, digital audio is comprised of many data points played back at an extremely fast rate. Instead we’re defining the audio by its sampling rate and bit depth. Here we’re not talking about bitrate because Hi-Res audio by its definition has to be lossless or uncompressed. But bitrate values only apply to formats with lossy compression. Those values tell you how much data compression was applied, with higher numbers meaning less compression and therefore better audio quality. In the age of digital music like mp3 and Spotify, most folks have seen audio quality defined in bitrate (128, 192, 320 kbps). Let’s start with some audio format basics.
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