I recently saw this on a forum. I’ve seen something like this said many times.

I won’t say who said it because he’s a good engineer and my intention is not to poke at him.

Here goes:

“I’ve been sticking with 88.2, to me the simple math (divide by 2) is a little more reassuring then 96 when down-sampling to 44.1.”

***facepalm***

Another guy (elsewhere) said:

“If you’re recording music, you should stick to 44.1k, which is CD Redbook standard. Recording at 48k and sample rate converting to 44.1 later only introduces artifacts and degrades the sound quality. Save 48k for when doing sound for video.”

***double facepalm***

Honestly, that makes no sense. Please, get this “Simple Math” MYTH out of your head!!

You don’t have to fully understand (or care) how sample rate conversion works, but you do need to realize that really smart people have already figured it out and MATH is not a difficult task for a COMPUTER!

The quality of conversion is what matters most, and it’s pretty damn important to capture as much as possible from the start. Not all converters are created equally well, and some will sound better operating at a certain sample rate.

@RandyCoppinger and I recently chatted about how to accurately test which sample rate our converters sound best at. We haven’t done the test yet but once our goggles and lab coats come in we probably will.

Currently I use 44.1k, and he uses 48k. Frankly I’m not yet working on anything good enough to spend twice the disk space and processing power on.