Quote:
Originally Posted by Top Jimmy
You simply need to understand the process of sampling and quantizing.
The compact disk standard sampling rate is 44.1 kHz. To state it simply, that means the audio is sampled 44,100 times per second.
The compact disk quantization standard is 16-bit. That is, 16 binary bits are used to measure the amplitude and polarity of the audio waveform per sample.
The only other thing you should know is the Nyquist theorem which states that a sampling rate can recover any frequency up to half of said rate. So, on paper this means a compact disk can play back frequencies up to 22.05 kHz.
If you can understand this, you can grasp that there can be different sampling rates, and different quantization levels (bit depths).
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And one more important thing you have to know in that context is that
Bit Depth is often confused with
Bit Rate:
Another term for
Bit Depth is
Resolution or
Bit Resolution with the units of
bit (16bit, 24bit).
However,
Bit Rate is a different thing with the unit of "
bits per second" which is used to describe compressed audio file (mp3, AAC), when you choose to encode your audio file in one of those formats, you will find a selector that gives you the option to choose the Bit Rate. Of course, higher is better.
Here is a screenshot of Pro Tools when you bounce to mp3 and ou can choose the Constant Bit Rate from the selector. The unit here is
kbit/s =
kilobits per second".