Originally Posted By: Matt Finley
I agree with Noel except possibly one point. I was taught that up-sampling a file cannot degrade it in any way. It just adds leading zeroes to the appropriate bytes.


That is correct regarding bit depth - going from 16-bit to 24 or 32 will not degrade the audio in any way - as you said, it just adds zeros for anything below -96dbfs (16 bit dynamic range limit). Going from 44.1khz to 88.2khz or 176.4khz similarly should not reduce quality in any way, as the resampler is just calculating samples to go between each recorded sample - though that depends on the resampler algorithm.

Going to a sample rate that is not an exact multiple of the original could theoretically reduce sound quality, as the resampler has to then interpolate each sample from ones around it. Generally speaking, you're unlikely to hear the difference, as most upsamplers have some level of oversampling (multiplying sample rate by 128x for example). Some resamplers do sound bad though, but again upsampling usually sounds fine for most.

Last edited by Simon - PG Music; 06/04/21 12:18 PM.
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