Samplerate Mythen: Harry Nyquist und die Mathemathik

In their heyday, researchers at Bell Labs earned 7 Nobel Prizes in total, and in 1960, the IEEE gave their “Medal of Honor” to Harry Nyquist, who had researched there for almost 40 years.

Back in the 1920s, the Yale graduate had worked on an early version of the fax machine. By 1947, he had made his most lasting contribution: a mathematical proof that showed any sound wave could be perfectly re-created so long as it was limited in bandwidth and sampled at a rate more than twice its own frequency.

Justin Colletti, Trust Me I'm a Scientist

Das Essay räumt gründlich auf mit einigen Mißverständnissen, denen zufolge hochauflösendes Audio (Samplerates mit 96kHz, 192kHz, oder womöglich noch mehr; Stichwort: DSD) „besser” sei, als das Standard-CD-Format mit 44.1kHz / 16Bit.

Der im Text vertretene Standpunkt ist keine Einzelmeinung, sondern vertritt den derzeitigen Stand der Wissenschaft; vergleiche zB. hier:

Articles last month revealed that musician Neil Young and Apple's Steve Jobs discussed offering digital music downloads of 'uncompromised studio quality'. Much of the press and user commentary was particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of uncompressed 24 bit 192kHz downloads. 24/192 featured prominently in my own conversations with Mr. Young's group several months ago.

Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.

Monty, xiph.org (Hervorhebung von mir)