Quality Preferences - Audacity Manual file:///C:/Program Files (x86)/audacity/help/manual/man/quality_prefere...

Quality Preferences
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Accessed by: Edit > Preferences > Quality (on a Mac Audacity > Preferences > Quality )

Quality Preferences.
Click in the left
column for other
preferences
Sampling
This panel sets the Default Sample Rate and Default Sample Format. It is strongly recommended that you
stick with the default settings.

Default Sample Rate: This sets the Sample Rate which will be used each time Audacity is

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launched and also when a new project window is opened. It offers a choice of 13 Sample Rates.

Generally you will want to use the default value of 44100 Hz, which can can reproduce all frequencies
that humans can hear (up to 22050 Hz) and is the standard for audio CDs. To choose some other
bespoke rate, click "Other..." in the dropdown and type your rate into the box to right of the dropdown.

Sample rates between 44100 Hz and 96000 Hz can produce higher quality but the quality benefits are
increasingly small compared to rapidly increasing consumption of disk space and increasing risk of
recording dropouts on slower computers. 192000 Hz music recordings could have ultrasonic playback
distortion that make them inferior to recordings at lower rates. See "24/192 Music Downloads are Very
Silly Indeed" for a technical discussion of the issues involved. Very high rates do have some
specialized uses such as ultrasonic wildlife recordings and high-speed tape capture.

Changing this Preference setting will not change your project's Project Rate, so if you wish your
current project to use the new sample rate you will need to reset that in the Selection Toolbar.

If you just want to make a change to your current project's sample rate without changing
the default rate, open the Project Rate dropdown at left of Selection Toolbar and select or
type in the rate you require.

Default Sample Format: This sets the Sample Format (bit depth) which will be used each time
Audacity is launched, or each time a new project window or track is opened. It offers a choice of three
sample formats or bit-depths. This affects both imported and newly recorded material, either in a new
or existing project (even if the other audio in an existing project is at some other quality).

The default 32-bit float resolution gives the highest quality of the three choices, but takes twice the
storage space on disk compared to 16-bit resolution.

It is strongly recommended that you work with this at the default 32-bit float resolution if
you have sufficient available disk space.

OGG will always import at 16-bit resolution using the standard OGG Vorbis importer,
irrespective of Default Sample Format. This is due to the design of the OGG codec.
However OGG can be imported at 32-bit resolution using FFmpeg, as described at Using
the file type dropdown menu on the Importing Audio page.

Conversion
These options concern the trade-offs that arise when converting from one sample rate to another and one
sample format to another.

For example, sample rate conversion is necessary whenever the sample rate of the track does not match the
current project rate. Sample format conversion would be required upon export if you used the default 32-bit
float sample format but exported a 16-bit audio file.

Sample rate conversion is also performed when using a Time Track so that the speed-changed audio can
retain its current sample rate. However for Time Track resampling Audacity automatically selects a quality
level tailored for this purpose and so changing the converter qualities below will not affect Time Tracks.

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Real-time and High-quality: Both the Sample Rate Converter and the Dither (for conversion
between sample formats) have options for use in different circumstances.
The "Real-time" options are only used when converting sample rates or formats for playback in
Audacity.
The "High-quality" options are used for sound that is being converted for storage on disk, for
example when rendering or exporting.
Option dropdown menus:
The Real-time Sample Rate Converter defaults to and should normally be left on "Medium
Quality". If jerky or uneven playback is experienced when using a slow machine or working with
many tracks, the setting can be changed to "Low Quality (Fastest)". On a fast machine, higher
quality settings may be used but may cause jerky or uneven playback, particularly with large
multi-track projects.
The High-quality Sample Rate Converter defaults to "Best Quality (Slowest)". Leave it at this
setting for the best quality conversion when exporting.
The Dither options are different methods of adding random low-level noise to mask clicky
rounding distortions when converting to a lower bit depth. Dither should normally be set to the
default "None" for Real Time playback and enabled for High-quality Conversion.
"Shaped" dither (default for High-quality conversion) concentrates the noise in the less
easily heard higher frequencies.
"Triangle" and "Rectangle" dither concentrate the noise less strongly in higher frequencies.
"Rectangle" does not add noise to absolute silence ( zero amplitude samples ) so can be
considered if the audio includes extensive pure silence.

For more detailed information on dither see the the Dither page.

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This version created on 2018-09-17 - Check current version of this page (development Manual)

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