audio sampling rate

[imported_itr]

can someone give me a brief overview of what sampling rate is? also, does 96khz have a better sound quality than 48khz?

 

[brentkiosk]

I'll give a quick stab here. There are undoubtedly those who know more.

When an analogsignal is digitized, the voltage is measured a bunch of times per second and each measurement is stored as a number. A rate of 48kHz means there are 48,000 numbers per second stored to represent the signal. To play the signal back, the numbers are converted back to a voltage at the same rate (and filtered). The absolute minimum sampling rate must be twice the maximum frequency of interest in the signal. Up to a point, a greater sampling rate will make it easier to convert the digital record back to an analog voltage for listening. So the 96 kHz rate should be better. After some point, you get very little practical improvement, however, and that is probably somewhere below 96kHz.