When you have a sample that is 16 bit, 44.1 and you convert to 24 bit 48.000 - do you create distortion?

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I know that converting 1 sample rate to the next sample rate, is not the world’s happiest thing to do. But when you have a sample that is 16, and 44,100 and you convert it 24 bit at 48,000 would you expect to create an audible distortion, or degradation in the sound quality?

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Depends on how much of the frequency range a sample is actually occupying. Sometimes you’ll hear a noticeable difference in sound, sometimes nothing at all. For instance, I create single-cycle samples at 16bit/44.1kHz. I export at 24bit/48kHz. Can’t hear much difference, because of two things - a single-cycle sample is very short, and how much frequency range it occupies is dependent upon an actual phrase, not the sample itself.

Now, if you’re talking loops and other bits of audio, then you will notice a possible bit of extra smudge in the higher frequencies, and sometimes a blurriness of audio, but as I’ll say often enough - where does the sound exist in the mix, and does it really matter? If it’s a weaker sound that is there to fill space, then it’s not important, but if you want it to be noticed, then that’s up to you :slight_smile: A good visual representation would be similar to taking an image at 72dpi and upping it to 300dpi. It’s packing in more data, but if you zoom in, it’s kinda smeary. Doesn’t add much to the actual image size, but does do some funny distortion of the data upon a closer look.

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Hi,

Thanks for that! Other question, if you know…

When I drop a 16 bit, 44.1 sample into the XNRI, Renoise does not ask me, “if I want to convert audio, to the current sample rate,” which is now 48.000 - recently I decided to switch, and move up to this rate. re: Soundcloud asks for 16 bit and 48, and I’m a SoundCloud Pro Member, and soon I am going to start using Get Repost, to distribute music…

Alas, I still have a bunch of 44.1 samples, and one of my VSTi’s, that I use to create samples, only exports @ 44.1 (as crazy as that sounds)

How does Renoise deal with the discrepancy? How would other samplers deal with it?

Thanks

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Well, that’s close to how I do it too - export @ 48/24. I generate single-cycles at all sorts of bit-rates and just ignore it. It outputs the final file @ 48/24, so I don’t worry :slightly_smiling_face:

As for your other questions, I don’t know much more other than each sampler has their own engine, and too many variables to answer well.

I’ll reiterate what I mentioned in my earlier post. This is one of those ‘trust your ears’ situations. Just enjoy the music-making process and run with it :smiley:

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