Confused about sample rate?

[JamesWade]

I have a .wav music album that I want to backup and send to my external hard drive (using FLAC.) 96kHz is it's sample rate although i'm not sure if I should convert it to 44.1 kHz like cd's or just keep the original. Anyone know what would be best?

[jagabo]

What do you mean by "best"? Best quality? Best (smallest) file size? Best compatibility with different players?

[JamesWade]

I want to keep it as close to the original as possible, so yes best quality.

[jagabo]

Then leave the files exactly as they are. Just copy them to the drive.

[JamesWade]

Well since the wav files are huge (100mb for 1 song) I wanted to compress them to a smaller size.

[davexnet]

Just convert to FLAC at the existing sample rate. It's lossless, and should save 50% file size (approx).

[jman98]

Just convert to FLAC at the existing sample rate. It's lossless, and should save 50% file size (approx).

I agree with the convert to FLAC idea, but the 50% space savings is very unrealistic and unlikely. It's impossible to predict the exact space savings in advance, but 30% is probably a lot more closer to what the OP will really get. By 30% I mean that the file will be 30% smaller, so a 100MB song would be about 70MB or so if converted to FLAC.

I'm not sure it really makes sense to convert a 44.1 kHz CD original to 96 kHz. I'd just leave it at 44.1 kHz.

If you really want a much smaller size than FLAC can do then you have to use a lossy audio codec. You may not notice any difference between the original and what you make at a high enough bit rate, but technically there will be some differences. MP3 at 320 Kbps could give a file about 20% the size of the original and most people couldn't tell any difference between the original and the MP3.

[Noahtuck]

Just convert to FLAC at the existing sample rate. It's lossless, and should save 50% file size (approx).

I agree with the convert to FLAC idea, but the 50% space savings is very unrealistic and unlikely. It's impossible to predict the exact space savings in advance, but 30% is probably a lot more closer to what the OP will really get. By 30% I mean that the file will be 30% smaller, so a 100MB song would be about 70MB or so if converted to FLAC.

I'm not sure it really makes sense to convert a 44.1 kHz CD original to 96 kHz. I'd just leave it at 44.1 kHz.

If you really want a much smaller size than FLAC can do then you have to use a lossy audio codec. You may not notice any difference between the original and what you make at a high enough bit rate, but technically there will be some differences. MP3 at 320 Kbps could give a file about 20% the size of the original and most people couldn't tell any difference between the original and the MP3.

Absolutely!!

Except he was talking about converting from 96 kHz to 44.1 kHz not from 44.1 to 96

[pandy]

Or if You are desperate You can mark this as 44.1 (48) ksps and use any lossy codec then after decompression You only need to restore native sample rate... also loss should be not very painful (probably it will be somewhere around 16 - 32kHz)