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Sampling Rate Discrimination: 44.1 kHz vs. 88.2 kHz

It is currently common practice for sound engineers to record digital music using high-resolution formats, and then down sample the files to 44.1kHz for commercial release. This study aims at investigating whether listeners can perceive differences between musical files recorded at 44.1kHz and 88.2kHz with the same analog chain and type of AD-converter. Sixteen expert listeners were asked to compare 3 versions (44.1kHz, 88.2kHz and the 88.2kHz version down-sampled to 44.1kHz) of 5 musical excerpts in a blind ABX task. Overall, participants were able to discriminate between files recorded at 88.2kHz and their 44.1kHz down-sampled version. Furthermore, for the orchestral excerpt, they were able to discriminate between files recorded at 88.2kHz and files recorded at 44.1kHz.

Authors: Pras, Amandine; Guastavino, Catherine
Affiliation: McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
AES Convention:128 (May 2010) Paper Number:8101 Import into BibTeX
Subject:Audio Coding and Compression

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