Mic vs Audacity sampling rate compatibility

Special Interest Groups Recording Equipment
1

I use a Samson C03U USB mic that has a 48khz sampling rate (not manually adjustable as far as I know), but have set Audacity to record at a 44.1khz sampling rate (mono-only for spoken voice). How are the two rates reconciled? Does Audacity re-sample the mic output to get 44.1khz input? Does the mic automatically change its output sampling rate to 44.1khz? Or what?

Audacity recordings sound OK so far so it seems that something is working right, but I’d like to understand better what’s happening.

2

44100 is the Audio CD sampling rate. 48000 is the television/video sampling rate. Both sampling rates are very common and well supported. What’s the goal? Some of my audio test signals were produced at 48000. If you care, 48000 has very slightly better audio high frequency characteristics.

I would probably change Audacity default to 48000 and do all the capture and processing in 48000 for the higher quality. You can convert to 44100 at export if you want.

Koz