Basic guide to Sampling Rates - What is it and how does this affect the sound of your music?

Paul McGowan, founder of PS Audio, has a wonderful daily newsletter. Today he offered a very simple explanation of sampling and bit rates... you know.. 44.1, 176.4, 9624, One bit DSD and all the variations between.

Have a look.
https://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/sample-rates/

This is a very confusing topic for professionals as well as dedicated audiophiles. Why does 44.1/16bit exist? and why do most recording engineer record at 48/24? And what is so special about DSD/one bit recording? It's very confusing.

Wikipedia and others claim that the president of Sony wanted to fit a Beethoven Symphony on to a 5" compact disc during the early development of CDs. 48/16 was being used by the video industry but the sampling rate was a little too much so they came up with 44.1. At the time, no one was thinking these sampling rates would double or quadruple to 88.2, 96, 176.4 or 192.. and now even double those numbers. Bit rates can range from 16 to 24 to 32 bit (which offers greater dynamics). Over the years, it's become a confusing mess. Conversions between those formats has never been optimum.

DSD is much simpler... 64, 128, 256.... big, bigger and biggest for recording. For listening you can go to 512 and 1024.

Enjoy reading Paul's Post!