[Flac] Standard encoding rates?

Hal Vaughan
Tue, 05 Apr 2005 08:53:24 -0000

On Tuesday 05 April 2005 11:26 am, Ralph Giles wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 05, 2005 at 02:26:03AM -0500, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> > Is there a list somewhere of "standard" encoding rates?  I
know, for
> > example, CDs are encoded at 44100, as is a lot of digital sound, but
I've
> > seen programs that specify different levels of quality (like radio,
> > phone, tape, CD) and I'd like to know if there are some encoding
rates
> > that are accepted as standardized for recording at different levels of
> > quality.
>
> Well, where analog formats are concerned these are estimates, and in
> there is no *standard*. "CD quality" is 44100 Hz stereo with 16
bits per
> channel. FM radio is limited to 17 kHz iirc, so in theory you could
> sample at 32 kHz, but in practice people usually use 44.1 or 48 kHz and
> just lowpass filter. AM radio is lower quality (mono) but I don't know
> what the digital equivalent would be. Telephone is nominally 8 kHz mono
> (i.e. really bad) though I think the use of digital voice codecs in the
> last 20 years may have improved on this a bit.
>
> Maybe someone else can comment on tape fidelity. I think the issue there
> has more to do with recording artefacts than bandwidth.
>
> FWIW,
>  -r

 The numbers are helpful, but I was trying to use those terms as examples. ?I
guess I mean, are there encoding rates that are more or less standard? ?For
example, if an expert is recording at a lower quality, are they likely to set
it at, say, 10000 samples per second, or more likely to use 8000 samples per
second? ?Or are there no standard rates and most files are just encrypted at
whatever rate the person creating them felt was a good balance of quality vs.
file size?

Does that make sense?

Hal