🚀 go-pugleaf

I felt I had to chime in here with my experiences and opinions.
I am still in 2 minds about the whole 96KHz thing.
Some days I think it is worthwhile, other days I do not. What is for certain though are 3 things.
1/. Anything higher than 96KHz is un necessary and pure snake oil (or at least the Audio equivalent)
2/. the effects and/or benefits seem to be cumulative, abd source dependant.
By this, I mean that if you are to use a sample rate of 96KHz and be certain that any difference you percieve is actually down to the increased resolution, and not the fact that most 24 bit converters actually deliver barely above 16 bit performance band the other fact that it is easier & cheaper to build an acceptable 96KHz DAC than it is to build a good 48KHz DAC.
Most of the tests that are done are not really testing the sample rate but the design of the converters.
3/. There is no point at all in using high sample rates unless your monitoring environment can accurately reproduce the frequencies involved. What is the point of using 96KHz sample rates (reproducing up to 48Khz of sound) when your monitors cut off at 21KHz or 23KHz?
It would be like dialling in a boost at 20Hz in the low end when your monitors simply stop at 60Hz.

Now, having just said that, there are certainly good arguments for using a high resolution source or recording. I have frequency & spectrum plots that clearly show sonic content at values of up to 30KHz. Never much higher.
So, does this mean that an SR of say 65KHz is really all we need?
No, not to my mind. There is a lot of research that seems to suggest Nyquist is only half the story, and to accurately reproduce all the nuances without any form of aliasing at all, we need to use 3x highest frequency and not 2x.

But at the end of the day, the best rule of thumb should be to use the best quality you can when recording. Certainly 24 bit. As for 96KHz?
The jury is still out.
Some days I think yes, other days I think No. There is no doubt that 24/96 audio sounds superb beyond 16/44.1 by a long, long way.
But as to this being down to the high sample rate or the wider word, or a combination of the two - it's still all very debatable.