Worship Musician June 2019 | Page 196

AUDIO WHY 96KHZ? MAKING THE LEAP TO HIGH DEFINITION LIVE AUDIO | Jeff Hawley Drummers spend endless hours debating optimal audio experience to the audience.’ For If you remember back to your Intro to Digital whether matched or traditional grip is the instance, we firmly believe that by offering a Audio class days, I’m sure the good old way to go. Bassists argue whether active or superior monitor mix for the musicians on stage, Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem comes to passive pickups are best. Endless battles have they will perform better and we head closer to mind at this point. In case you slept through been waged over the real or perceived audio the optimal audio experience. Probably few that particular day in class, here is the theorem benefits of true bypass guitar pedals. As audio debates on that point. But when it comes in its simplest form: engineers, the question du jour is “should I to many aspects of what an optimal audio jump up to 96kHz?” experience would be, the question quickly Sample rate is defined as the times per becomes highly subjective. What sounds good second that voltage created by a waveform is Before we dive into the merits of 96kHz, let’s to me and what you would consider harsh or measured and stored. Frequency is accurately attempt to ground the subject in something too dull is difficult to pin down clearly. Here is reconstructed when this sampling occurs at real and tangible instead of simply shouting where math and physics comes to the rescue! least twice per cycle. Given this relationship, out our personal opinions on the matter. As the highest frequency that can be sampled the use of 96kHz in a live sound environment is One objective fact that may help focus the frequently touted as being a more effective tool conversation here is that we are considering at achieving the goal of live sound engineers, our audience to be humans (sorry, Fido). In Ok, makes sense. Our 20kHz human audience let’s start with defining just what our goal experiment after experiment confirms an upper is ready to receive their optimal audio experience might be. limit of 20kHz for human audio frequency when the sample rate used is at least 40kHz. So accurately is half the sample rate. perception. Let’s see what this 20kHz limit common sample rates like 44.1kHz or 48kHz As live sound engineers, our primary goal can really means in the context of delivering an should be more than enough, right? Seems I perhaps best be summed up as ‘deliver the optimal audio experience to the audience. could deliver the optimal audio experience to 196 June 2019 Subscribe for Free...