MSNCP - Sample Rate and Bit Rate

One of the study material given for MSNCP class is about Bit Rate and Sample Rate. This is an important thing to know especially for recording and mixing audio for film (or even CD). This is the definition of Sample Rate and Bit Rate I took from http://streaming.wisconsin.edu. I am not understand that much about this technically audio recording physics things =D But at least we know the basic so that as a composer we can produce the sound as we expected to.

Sample Rate

Sample rate is the number of samples of a sound that are taken per second to represent the event digitally. The more samples taken per second, the more accurate the digital representation of the sound can be. For example, the current sample rate for CD-quality audio is 44,100 samples per second.

The more samples per second that are taken, the more accurate the digital representation is of the analog waveform. Each sample is really only a number that contains the amplitude value of a waveform measured over time. This brings us to bit-depth.

Bit Rate

Bit depth defines how many bits are used to describe each of the samples taken from the sample rate (above). It describes the potential accuracy of a digital audio file. Higher bit depth audio will sound better than smaller bit-depth audio. 8 and 16-bit audio are currently the most common sample sizes. 8-bit audio takes up less hard drive space but is inherently noisier than 16 or 24 bit-depth audio. CD quality is 16-bit.

Bit depth is frequently encountered in specifications for hardware and in the specifications for what kind of digital audio a piece of software can capture and process.

Basically, it depend on the needs for choosing between the level of Sample Rate and Bit Rate we will be using. The higher the Bit Rate and the Sample Rate require the higher processing tools also. I prefer using 48.000 for sample rate. Because with a little upgrade in sample rate, you can produce much better sound quality than 44.100 sample rate (based on my subjective opinion :p).