Do I maximize sampling rate beyond 44100 Hz, or do I do something else?
And at what point do humans stop noticing any increase in sound quality?
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Sign up to join this communityWell, it depends on what you're doing.
The primary limitations to the sound quality of any sound recorder are
Only the third component here has anything to do with samplerate and bit depth. If the microphones are cheap electrets and the preamps noisy, going above 16 bit 44.1 kHz can't really improve the sound quality. Yet even in this case, the overall sound quality of a project will be rather better if you do at least not need to switch back and forth, so choose what fits best any media already present or to the desired target format (e.g. usually 44.1 for CDs, 48 for video).
Only when the microphones and preamps are good (or you're directly recording a line signal), the ADC becomes really important. But again, it's primarily a hardware issue: a good ADC at 16 bit 44.1 kHz can sound splendid, while a bad ADC won't sound ok even if you try to run it at 32 bit 192 kHz (which is generally not possible at bad ADCs anyway).
Still, there is one reason why it's good to record at high samplerates/bit depths (I'll call it SRnBD for now): Your signal will likely be processed digitally in some way. Now, even though it's DSP, such processing does mainly affect the "analog" qualities of a signal. These can be modelled nicely on a high-SRnBD signal, but not so well by reduced one: additional artifacts may be introduced. For instance, applying a compressor to a 16-bit signal will amplify the already present quantization errors/noise. Pulling a 44.1 kHz signal through a digital overdrive processor will produce audible aliasing frequencies. And so on.
I think 24 bit 96 kHz is the limit to where it can really make any significant difference at all anymore.