KVR Audio

Nleif · Post by **Nleif** » Sat Feb 02, 2019 4:46 am

I've heard here and there on the forums that soft synths, EQ's and reverbs and the like benefit from an increase in your audio interfaces sample rate - at the tradeoff for more strain on the system.

I was curious, is this true for all vsts? or just certain ones that are coded to benefit from 88k or 192k?

Thanks!

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Sat Feb 02, 2019 8:44 am

In general it's true: increasing the resolution renders more precise results. It's natural, law of math, not intended put in behaviour by the code.

Can't think of an example where where it makes things worse, but I can imagine lots of cases where it hardly makes any difference. Them being when it already produces the best results. You have to watch out for the placebo effect.

Nleif · Post by **Nleif** » Sat Feb 02, 2019 9:01 am

Thanks BertKoor, I guess my next step is to export a project in various sample rates and compare the results

electro · Post by **electro** » Sat Feb 02, 2019 2:27 pm

it depends on the VSTI, some yes others no.

DJ Warmonger · Post by **DJ Warmonger** » Sat Feb 02, 2019 2:52 pm

I think you're overthinking it. As BertKoor said, the sound benefits from higher audio rate. How does high sample rate impact the final outcome is difficult to define.

S0lo · Post by **S0lo** » Sat Feb 02, 2019 2:55 pm

Nleif wrote: Sat Feb 02, 2019 4:46 amI was curious, is this true for all vsts? or just certain ones that are coded to benefit from 88k or 192k?

No, definitely not true for all VSTs. Specially samplers and sample play back plugins won't benefit from upping the sample rate unless they have internal effects that are pron to aliasing.

Generally speaking, Analog emulating synths would benefit the most since you really don't want aliasing for an analog sound. Digital FM synths like FM8 or so would depend on your taste, you may find your self liking the low rate sound or the high rate sound.

Some times the opposite can be true, if for example you want to emulate a digital 8bit thing then lowering the sampling rate can sometimes achieve that.

cron · Post by **cron** » Sat Feb 02, 2019 3:16 pm

Nleif wrote: Sat Feb 02, 2019 9:01 am Thanks BertKoor, I guess my next step is to export a project in various sample rates and compare the results

This tends not to work as so many plugs just sound plain different at different sample rates. It's not even a quality thing. The Transformer oscillator in Cyclop is one particularly egregious example that springs to mind.

For some older plugins I imagine you'll see a benefit, but you've really got to be working at the increased sample rate from the start of the project. It's just too unpredictable increasing it at the end. Most modern plugins will already be internally oversampling (or at least have user selectable oversampling) if they benefit from increased sample rates, so you don't need to worry about your DAW's sample rate in those cases. The only synth plugin I've tried from the last few years that can produce serious, immediately obvious aliasing at 48k is Thorn.

Do all VST's benefit from an increased sample rate?