I just got to thinking about mp3 audio and something popped into my head.  I know that mp3s, especcialy those below 160 kbit/s, sound inferior to cd audio.  However if an mp3 was taken from a higher quality source like PCM audio at 48khz from a DVD and encoded at 48khz instead of 44.1khz wouldn't it sound better?  This is my reasoning: even though mp3 is lossy doesn't sampling rate have more of an effect on the subjective sound quality?  So an mp3 at 48khz would sound better than cd audio at 44.1khz right?
Anyone know this for sure or am I totally wrong.

Justin Ward

btt

A few statements to start:
DVD audio has a better bit/sample rate  than CD audio..CD is 16 bit/44.1 khz, while DVD audio is 24 bit/96 khz,if I recall correctly. That would give a better base to create high quality audio off of.

Sound quality from 44.1 to 48khz is sooooo slight, that a human would not notice.

and now...


In theory yes..it would sound better... however(at this time)..
the compression of data for mp3 format seems to take a bit out of the audio as compared to a CD, and the weak link in the ENTIRE chain is the DAC.
DAC is short for Digital to Audio Converter. It is what changes the 0s and 1s on your CD/DVD to sound. At this point in time, no mp3 playback software can compete with the ones used in CD/DVD players. The DACs in CD/DVD playback devices are specialized for that one task, and therefore are better at sound reproduction. I have tested this out in a studio setting..and no mp3(even at a VERY high encoding rate) can match a CD. However...give the programmers time..and it will be better than a CD.

No.

You have a bunch of audio data.  You throw out 90% of it which your acoustic model's encoding algorithm deems a waste of space.  The remaining 10% is all you have with which to recreate the original sound.

The number of bits remaining in the end is what matters.  48KHz might sound slightly better than 44.1KHz, and 160Kbps might sound slightly better than 128Kbps, but what really matters is the amount of data remaining and how well your model worked against it to begin with.