Mixing at 96Khz vs 48Khz ?

[Yash SinghParticipant]

Hey Everyone!

I'm Yash Singh, a producer and a beginner mixing and mastering engineer. Here in India working at some professional studios made me realize that the industry standard for mixing a song is at 96Khz. But does it really make any difference at all ? Like if that's true then why not the 192Khz ?

[Raoul SchuhmacherParticipant]

Hi Yash, I think it would make a difference in theory, however, I don't think I would be able to hear the difference. In mixing practice it would seem to me dependent on a) the source material - if material was recorded at a lower sampling rate, then up-sampling beyond 48 kHz would not seem to make sense, b) the artist intent - unless there is a specific requirement for hi-res it seems there is no practical benefit, since it also seems that the ability to monetize hi-res audio is going away with Apple and others offering hi-res as part of their standard subscriptions. Mixing at higher sampling rate would also have an impact on processing speed and data storage, the former probably being more of a concern than the latter.  I personally mix at 48 kHz unless a studio or client would specifically ask for more. Happy mixing! Cheers, Raoul

[Erik DuijsParticipant]

There is no audible difference between 44.1K or anything above.

However there are some caveats here why you'd still want to mix/master at higher sampling rates. Whenever you apply non-linear processing like compression/limiting and especially saturation/distortion (in digital plugins), you can introduce aliasing that can potentially sound quite horrible. Mixing at a higher sampling rate can clean things up in that regard.

Personally I just mix at 44.1K or 48K, because I don't tend to go overboard with saturation plugins et al to a degree that the sampling rate becomes an audible problem (to my ears anyway). Most such plugins have oversampling options anyway, so you might want to engage those.

If you've got plenty of CPU power to spare, then sure go to 96K or perhaps even higher, but in general I think it doesn't make an important difference.

Cheers,
Erik

[Yash SinghParticipant]

Thank so much for clearing that out !

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