{"id":788,"date":"2013-09-21T19:29:24","date_gmt":"2013-09-21T23:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aviom.com\/aviomblog\/?p=788"},"modified":"2013-10-28T15:22:34","modified_gmt":"2013-10-28T19:22:34","slug":"sample-rate-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviom.com\/blog\/sample-rate-101\/","title":{"rendered":"Sample Rate 101"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ever wonder what <em>sample rate<\/em> really means? Here&#8217;s the basic info.<\/p>\n<p>Digital audio is, by definition, just an approximation of its analog counterpart, the vibrations our ears can actually sense and hear. Sample rate is one of the primary factors that determines how accurate that approximation is.<\/p>\n<p>The issue is that sound is a dynamic thing, changing with time, and digitizing works by looking at a particular point in time. It\u2019s similar to the way video works: what we see normally is dynamic and changes with time, but a video or movie is comprised of a lot of static images that play back so fast that our eyes and brains can\u2019t perceive the difference between the motion and the static images. In other words, while the video is merely an approximation of actual movement.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"float: right; margin-left: 20px;\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/W0TcXPOJaog\" height=\"157\" width=\"280\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>If you made a movie by taking a picture four times a second, the fidelity of the movie would be quite low, and the video would look significantly different from the real motion. But if you make that movie by taking a picture, say, 24 or 30 times a second, the result could look fantastic. The video to the right shows security camera footage shot at 1, 4, 7, 10, 15, and about 30 frames per second.<\/p>\n<p>Same idea with converting analog audio to digital: <em>sample rate<\/em> indicates the number of samples (the pictures in our analogy) your gear is taking every second, and the more frequently you sample, the better the approximation can be. So a higher sample rate translates, generally speaking, to better fidelity because you&#8217;re getting a better translation from analog to digital and back to analog.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aviom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sample-rate-illustration.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"800\" height=\"238\" class=\" wp-image-924  aligncenter\" alt=\"sample-rate-illustration\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aviom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sample-rate-illustration.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">It turns out that sound gets sampled A LOT more frequently than images need to: CDs use a sample rate of 44.1kHz, or 44,100 times per second. Most digital audio gear used in a live environment uses either a 48kHz or 96kHz sample rate (48,000 or 96,000 samples per second, respectively), while some studio gear goes as fast as 192kHz.<\/p>\n<p>In a future post, we\u2019ll talk about sample rate\u2019s cousin, bit depth, and some detail about why sample rates need to be so high. Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever wonder what sample rate really means? Here&#8217;s the basic info.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[61],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":984,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions\/984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}