(This thread is not for discussion of sample rates in recording or mixing.)

In windows I have my driver (Focusrite) settings set to 44.1khz which matches most audio sources. I've just changed it to 88.2 and noticed that it sounds different while listening to Spotify audio for example.

On a technical level is the audio interface altering the signal (possibly degrading it) in an attempt to upsample it?

 

are you using the Spotify on the app or on the browser? I leave mine on 96khz (because my hearing is superhuman, it makes SUCH a huge difference. haha no Im just lazy and it's on 96 for nebula to play natively) and I don't think I ever noticed anything, but I'm wondering if perhaps like high quality streaming is disabled or something and it's messing with the playback?

when you say different is it a playback rate difference? high end? when you say "Spotify as an example" that implies it's happening across the board with applications, which makes me think it's windows (assuming windows too, if it's a Mac I really don't know) and focusrite driver miscommunication or something. on my motu M2 driver software there is an option that says sync windows sample rate to device, maybe you have something like that for the focusrite. I'm totally not smart enough to know what's going on, just curious.

 

For what you need to understand, yes. Since your sample has not actually changed in sample rate within the file itself, this conversion is being done real time and not being written to your file.

We used to focus a lot of attention on Dither and Truncation when discussing different audio interfaces and sample rate conversions. In your situation "Dither UP" must be applied to the original waveform so that there is enough data to support the longer bitrate word length of the higher resolution sample rate. This can be done via Dither UP, which is adding white noise to the signal to allow for the increase in bit rate. Sometimes you hear it referred to as padding, stuffing zeros, or "oversampling". Because the computer/interface are using some method of "best guessing" to fill in the data which was never captured by the original lower sample rate.

 

Can you hear the difference between 48 kHz and 192 kHz?
48 kHz: Mids are very harsh, highs were muffled. 96 kHz: Immediately noticeable difference from 48 kHz. Cleaner highs, mids are softer and smoother, bass is tighter. 192khz: Top end very airy, the "metallic" tone of the steel strings comes through.

If CD material with 44.1 kHz and 16Bit is converted to 48, 96 or 192kHz for playback, there may well be sound losses, since 48, 96 or 192kHz is not a whole multiple of 44.1kHz. In this case new samples are calculated by interpolation. A lossless (it doesn't get any better) conversion only works with integer multiples to the CD sample rate, like 88.2 or 176.4 kHz, which some DACs support for this reason.Therefore, I use only ASIO for digital music playback, which means that each audio file is played in the format it is in.

 

Last edited: Aug 26, 2022