Does sample rate affect music quality?

These data chunks are known as the sampling rate or sampling frequency.

kHz is sometimes referred to as sampling rate, sampling interval, or cycles per second.

Gradient neon colored sound waves reflecting on black surface

Flavio Coelho / Moment / Getty Images

In theory, the higher the kHz value is, the better the sound quality.

This is due to more data chunks being used to describe the analog waveform.

This is normally true in the case ofdigital music, which contains a complex mix of frequencies.

However, this theory collapses when dealing with other types of analog sound, such as speech.

The popular sampling rate for speech is 8 kHzbelow audio CD quality at 44.1 kHz.

This is because the human voice has a frequency range of approximately 0.3 to 3 kHz.

With this example in mind, a higher kHz doesn’t always mean better quality audio.

These sounds mean that the sampling rate is set too high.