[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Realistically, frequencies around 20 kHz will create audible artifacts (aliasing)

The energy of the signal components above the Nyquist is generally very low, and very few double blind tests have given any indication that humans can detect the resulting aliasing (even though many people claim to be able to do, almost always in non-double-blind environments).

Badly written digital synthesis can generate high energy signal components above 22kHz, but that's because they're badly written, not because the theory is wrong.

[speak_on]

Genereally very low for a single track? What about 200 tracks? Badly written synthesis, or badly recorded live instruments, or bounced and re-bounced dozens of times... we are not talking about the quality-defining aspect here. You can produce an excellent mix on KRKs connected directly to a MacBook.

This space is not driven by a single precise formula. 48/96 kHz helps some engineers to produce better sounding mixes. Can everyone hear the extended range of Adam tweeters? Probably not. But some can, and they benefit from that. Even if there is no double-blind study to prove this in absolute terms.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

If you recorded 200 tracks of the same instrument, so that the partials above Nyquist were all broadly the same, then sure, summing the tracks would include summing 200 copies of the aliasing results too.

But very little music is like that, and the energy profile above Nyquist will differ dramatically. Consequently, you're not summing a set of identical aliasing results, and in general, the results will still be undetectable to almost everyone.

Jacob Collier routinely works with 300+ tracks in Logic. He doesn't worry about this sort of thing, and neither do the Grammy voters who love what he does.

[speak_on]

Got it. Grammy voters love Collier's mixes. What about Tony Maserati? He can clearly tell the difference between 44.1 and 88.2. If your argument is that these engineers can't hear the difference - you are going to be disappointed. They can. Even Dave Pensado who mixes at 16/44.1, does that because he rejects the idea, he can hear the difference according to him.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I can find no evidence that Maserati (or 99% of any other mix or mastering engineers) has ever tested his "appreciation" of the "crunch" at 44.1 in a double blind environment.

It is always amazing how much that is claimed about what people can hear fails to show up when tested in this, the only acceptable scientific way.

Perhaps Maserati has done this, and could still tell the difference. In which case, he should carry on! But he should carry on anyway! People should do what brings them joy, and if he likes working at 44.1kHz or whatever, he should absolutely do that.

What people should not do is lecture about stuff that isn't true and/or isn't demonstrable in proper test settings, and most (not all, but most) of the SR stuff fits into one or other or both of those categories.

[speak_on]

Just to wrap this up. Is your professional opinion that techniques like antialiasing/oversampling/etc and any sample rate above 44.1 kHz are essentially an industry-wide scam and the perceived benefits are not true?

And since there are no double-blind studies supporting this tech, both using and adding any of these features to your software would only be propagating this scam further? I.e. far more than just lecturing "about stuff that isn't true" this actually physically implements features that are not true?.. OK, at least you are staying consistent.

(Also, looking forward to you discovering that there are not many double-blind studies supporting the "delusion" that the effect of a low pass filter is real and not just something we can measure but can't hear.)

[PaulDavisThe1st]

No need to add any features to Ardour - it already supports any sample rate that your hardware supports.

There are places where (a) double precision (or better) floating point math benefits DSP, but that's nowhere in Ardour (and likely, if one is clear about the definition, in any other DAW either) - certain types of plugins can benefit from this, but they should not impose that cost on the rest of the processing infrastructure (i.e. they should convert internally and then back again, rather than require that the whole host uses 64 or 80 bit floating point.

There is a reasonably good argument for 96kHz because of the possible characteristics of the brickwall filter and its impact on aliasing. This argument gets a lot weaker for even high SRs.

However, both of these are largely theoretical in the sense that very few people, if any, can reliably hear the results in actual produced music or soundtracks. So while it might be a good idea to use higher SRs, whether that actually results in something that can truly be said to "sound better" is much more questionable.

At the highest level, I think that all of this is pretty irrelevant. Most of the music that people consider "great" was recorded with equipment far below the quality levels achievable with mid-priced pro-sumer gear today (mics perhaps being the sole exception). Great music/great sound is, I think, appreciated largely independently of its audio "fidelity". There is a huge difference between an amazingly well-recorded ensemble and a poorly recorded one, but for most people, if the well-recorded ensemble is playing stuff they don't like and the poorly recorded one is playing some stuff they love, all the "fidelity" in the world won't improve the former and the lack of it won't stop them loving the latter.

In addition, with the rise of deeply impressive sample libraries and better and better synthesizers running as plugins, the AD/DA elements of music during "recording"/composition are becoming less and less important for more and more music. That amazing patch someone uses in Onmisphere doesn't get better or worse by using a higher SR, and that incredible string library (e.g. New Albion) is what it is regardless of what your converters can do.

So, in short, I would say: do what you want, but if you're going to try to justify it with science, make sure the science is right and if you're going to try to justify it with "sound", then be aware that for most people the differences won't matter (or even exist at all).