Quote:
Originally Posted by
musichascolors
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Just to clarify though, the staircase effect doesn't affect your sound. Higher sample rates above 44.1 only increase the amount of treble in the recording. That increase being inaudible, btw.
Yes, it's true that there's no staircase effect (heard several pros victims of this misunderstanding), due to the (required!) low pass filter applied when converting to analog. Actually the reason for recording above 44.1 isn't getting more trebles (which is also a correct statement) but rather making easier to build the required low pass cited above.
Assume you're done with trebles up to, say, 20KHz. If you record at 44.1KHz you need a very steep low pass filter with a very narrow transition band, from all-pass at 20KHz to all-stop at 22050Hz (half of 44.1KHz). Instead, if you record at, say, 96KHz, you are fine with a much gentler low pass with a transition band from 20KHz to 48000Hz (half of 96KHz).
In general a steeper filter means higher computational costs (more FIR coefficients).
Note that, beside filter complexity, the steeper one causes a sharper rotation of phase in the transition area.