Audio Bit Depth and Sample Rate Explained

Looking to deepen your understanding of audio fundamentals? Follow along as Sam Loose walks you through you the basics of sample rate and bit depth and how those two concepts could impact your next audio project.

00:00 - Intro
00:35 - Binary Digital Systems
1:20 - Sample Rate and Bit Depth
2:26 - Does a higher Sample Rate mean better quality?
3:40 - What Is Aliasing?
4:40 - Sampling Frequencies
5:30 - Outro

Musicbed SyncID:
MB014IKMRCFPLLZ

#DigitalAudioBasics #SampleRate #BitDepth

[arkfied]

usually companies only makes youtube videos advertising their products, but this one makes hidden gems of tutorials... after watching a lot of tutorials i finally understand what the heck are bit depths and sample rates because of this. thanks

[xnewerx]

Though I already knew what sample rate and bit depth are, I found something new to me here. Thank you!

[StumpedLikeaFox]

The quality you put into this video is amazing! Thank you so much!

[سلمنتيشنكافي]

The most wonderful simplified explanation

[MrAchris]

Good job explaining these concepts. Not too much information and not too little.

[donflamingo]

I see. In videography term, sample rate is like frame per second. Traditionally, cinema is 24fps, while modern video can be 30 or 60 fps. If you want slow motion, then you can capture video in 120 fps and play it back at lower fps. If you capture video at 120fps and play it back at 60fps timeline, you will get 2x slow motion.

If you play it back at 30fps, you will get 4x slow motion. And if you play it at 24fps, you will get 5x slow motion without any stuttering or other problems. Exactly because 120fps can be scaled back nicely in those frame rates.

While bit depth is equal video bit depth. Video bit depth is based on RGB value. That one is harder to explain but generally speaking 10 bit color will have more value and better dynamic range than 8 bit color. 12 bit have more value than 10 bit and so on. High end cinema camera can record 16 bit color.

[GameArtsCafe]

I followed one of your pages and was led here. Most people think that the sample rates and bit depth fully capture the frequency range possible in the sample rate but the truth is that it's only a spectrum/frequency range container/allocated where as the audio capture device also needs the ability to capture the higher frequency range to pass it onto the container to get the full benefit. Most audio interfaces are rated between 20-20khz and will have fall off levels after that (even if advertised 24/192 max sample rate.) I miss my Roland UA-101 (no win 11 driver) Why would "professionals" want higher than human hearing? usually to create ambient tracks and creature voices by recording the highest frequency range they can and then stretch out the audio so the audio is smooth rather than missing frequencies and sounding bit crushed. Another giant factor that many may not realize is that missing frequencies maybe detrimental to your health, all physical matter is effected and shaped by sound - look up cymatics. Sound stimulates cells were as deprivation kills cells - just like a puppy without its mother or father to hear a heart beat, if there is none it dies or develops neurological problems.

[joel_pnk]

I had to learn the differences between sample rates and bit rates for uni and this helped me a lot! Thank you!

[expgoyc]

Excellent video! Aliasing is a tough topic for me atm, but I'll research it elsewhere now

[SHUJINCELL]

Ahh so record everything at 10Mhz, got it! Great video.

[mardan]

Excellent video. Didactic, direct and easy to follow. Thanks, that's how you really learn.

[Mmarjl]

Thank you so much Sir🫡. You have explained it in such a phenomemal way. God's love ❤👊🏾.

[dappershaves]

great content beautifully structured for easy understanding. I'm a big fan of educators, not reviewers and other BS. audio trumps video always, without sound video generally sucks. just mute any video and see how long you'll keep watching. now i can up my audio wiht a better understanding of analyser in garage band and other tools.

[D-LO-cw]

For visual bit depth where you have black and white as start and end values I'm guessing for sound it's different, and the higher the bit depth, the more the range expands as well as segmenting the existing range?

[hendricksam]

I taught my production students about this just yesterday.

[AnandRajdeep]

Excellent video. Very lucid! Thank you.

[Mmarjl]

Brilliant! Thank you brother! ❤🥹🫡👊🏾 nice hair ☺.

[mattrogers]

Great video brother. This helped a ton with my editing.

[Quantumflame]

Great explanation. But for us normal folks, do I need Tidal HiFi Plus, which allows for up to 192kHz/24bit?

My sound system can play hi res lossless but if I am not editing the source audio, do I need hi res lossless?

Or should I stick with YouTube Music?

[captaincinema]

Thanks for that informative explanation, Sam -- very easy to understand. One question, tho -- what are they talking about when they talk about a depth of 1 bit depth? I googled for information about the SACD format and it returned this: "While the standard CD format is tied to a 44.1 kHz sampling rate, SACD samples at 2.8224 MHz. Also, instead of a 16-bit depth, it uses a 1-bit depth" this came from Lifewire website. Years ago I also came across a friend's CD player that had emblazoned on the front along with the CD logo, that it was 1bit. If the higher the depth bit number is gives the better performance, what are they talking about when they say 1 bit depth? Wouldn't that mean the audio is right at the the noise floor?