Standard audio sampling rates range up from 8kHz speech to 192kHz ultra-high fidelity

Evidence

Sampling rates common in audio technology are 44.1 kHz (compact disc), 48 kHz (professional audio), 32 kHz (less demanding audio), and for very demanding audio 96 kHz or even 192 kHz. Speech technology uses the sampling rate 8–16 kHz. The telephone bandwidth of 300–3400 Hz requires a sampling rate of about 8 kHz. Numerical samples from A/D-conversion may be coded in various ways. The most straightforward representation is to use PCM coding (pulse-code modulation). Each sample is quantized into a binary number where the number of bits implies the precision of the result. Figure 3.9 illustrates the principle of such a conversion using four bits, which corresponds to 16 levels. Sample values of an analogue signal are mapped onto binary numbers so that there are 2n discrete levels when the number of bits is n. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 407

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines PCM coding and maps each application domain to its canonical sampling rate.
• SHARE: The specific rate ladder (8/32/44.1/48/96/192 kHz with their applications) is the kind of detail an audio engineer would appreciate.