Sample Rates

True, but keep in mind that there is no advantage of higher sample rate BEYOND INCREASED BANDWIDTH. IOW, 44.1k will give you response out to 20,000 Hz. That's all most people (ESPECIALLY adult males!) can hear. There is a common belief that within that passband higher sample rate will somehow add to the accuracy of the signal. Not so; it only increases bandwidth (well, there was some old gear that had dodgy filtering, but that's another story and no longer germaine). Of course, if you have great Shoeps mics, great tweeters, and great ears, knock yourself out!

Bit depth helps, especially when you're recording and mutilating...er, effecting the signal. In the real world with real systems and real environmental noise, I agree with 16 bit as a good choice of delivery format - you *generally* won't hear a difference going to 24 here. But there are rare exceptions.

Digital downloads usually DO suck, but that's all about bitrate. When you start hitting 256k/s, many of the codecs (wma, mp3) sound pretty durn good. WHY so many of them are at 128k is beyond me.

Converting from 44.1 to 96 is an impossible premise for improvement because it's a 44.1k signal to begin with. The only benefit I can see of 96k is this: Every digital conversion will produce some artifacts. If you get enough tracks together, there can be some awkward manufactured overtones as a result of the combination of all the converted signals. You don't have that with analog. So I think 96k would reduce that possibility in a very large multitrack session, where a lot of things are doubled. Like if you had 10 guitar tracks, a drum loop + real drums, multiple vocals, etc. all with seperate effects tracks, you might hear a difference in your final master.

Even then, worrying about 96k and 24 bit is a waste of time IMO. Especially on a Boss or Roland box. That's so laughable, because you are inputing through their consumer grade preamps, EQ, and digital effects processing. (including the essential compression) If you're using COSM on anything, guitars, mics, whatever, then you're a slave to that level of sound quality, regardless of the sample rate or bit depth. Not that the Roland boxes sound bad, because they don't. They sound good. But the high conversion specs are simply marketing hype on those boxes, unless you're bypassing all the fancy features and using pro grade outboard gear. In that case you wouldn't be buying the Roland box. You'd get a stand alone multitracker, or you'd stay on the computer.

CD's have a sample rate of 44.1kHz as the human ear hears up to roughly 20kHz and due to sampling laws the sample rate must be twice the maximum frequency in range. As such 48kHz may give a noticable improvement, but not much.

Any case, 96 kHz is just high end, and is NOT needed in anyway, all there is is a massive waste of bandwidth encompassing frequencies no human (and if anyone claims otherwise they are wrong, as it can't physically be done, you simply cannot hear into the upper ranges). So 96kHz just fits in with all the "a bigger number means it's better" brigade.

ALSO when you dump the music to CD format (44.1kHz) then note that you have to convert between the two sample rates introducing (however small) rounding into the conversion.

24bit, well, basically all you really need is a few more bits than 16 to catch rounding artifacts. Go for 24bit if you can, but as far as 96kHz is concerned I wouldn't be too bothered about it.