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Since I do not do SACD and stay in PCM world I always wonder what the optimum sampling rate might be.  As I told I discard the 48X as never was necessary rate. So, we have 44.1K, 88.2K, 176K and 352K… Surely we are out of 16-bit world – a move from 16bit to 20 or 24 bit is the largest step-up in any PCM improvement. I have to admit that I recorded 16/44 and as long the file never was re-render by DSP and never was converted to CD the quality of Sound was very high for “red book” – none of CDs come even close. The recording in true 20 bit and 44K already set all bets off and delivers very reputed result. From there we can settle at 24bit  (though I hear no difference between 20 and 24 bit) and only were we can go from here is to increase the sampling rate - 2X, 4X, 8X…

In context of it I think it would be interesting to look at Dan Lavry position on the subject. He believes that optimum rate is in 60-70KHz as going faster reduces accuracy and therefore he considers the damming for higher rate is a pure marketing force demand. He have written a number of position paper on the subject if someone interested then is very education read – they are publicly available. Particularly I was very fascinated with Lavry’s explanation how higher sampling rate destroys bass.

What is very captivating in this subject is that very same take place with analog – a higher tape speed improves everything but kills bass quality. The 7½ ips has properly structured bass. At 15ips the total sound is incontestably better but bass become “too fast”. The 30ips delivers the identical with the source sound with good bass but it is “different bass”. I initially thought that the bass problem at high speed are related to the moderation of pressure of tape to the machine heads but playing with it ( and in my past I did it a lot, appalling tremendous pressure to the tape heads) I more feel that the lower tape sapped might be beneficial for bass by nature.

I do not have an answer and I always wonder if the relation between speed and bass is the subject of pure implementation or there are some fundamental advancement of lower speed (tape or sampling rate) for better bass.

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site