Audacity Forum

There are both advantages and disadvantages with recording at higher bit rates. While higher bit rates offer a (theoretically) higher frequency response, practical circuit designs become considerably more costly and processing loads increase rapidly. Commonly with consumer level equipment, if 96 kHz is supported the noise level and distortion will be greater than at a more leisurely 48 or 44.1 kHz bit rate. Even with expensive professional level equipment 192 kHz provides lower than optimum performance. As regards frequency response, circuits are designed to limit the bandwidth to below 20 kHz, so any theoretical benefits of going much above 60 kHz sample rate disappear entirely. The main point for high quality audio equipment working internally at very high sample rates is to optimise the performance of bandwidth limiting filters. Once in the digital domain all audio content can be exactly defined up to the Nyquist frequency.