is mpc sound output only 44100 khz?

lets say i have a sound in the mp pitched up. this means higher quality, doesnt it? then i layer it down with various other samples, that are pitched up or down. this means even higher quality, doesnt it?

i am trying to say this. if we assume that a sample at 44100, when pitched up, gives us a sound of a higher samplerate, doesnt the mpc output a sound of higher quality than 44100? so when we mix a beat and burn it to cd, the beat is actually downsampled and of inferior quality than what we hear from our monitors on the beatmaking process.

just another childish question.

Yes, all current MPC's can only output 16bit/44100khz.(4000 went up to 24/96 and a 5000 will import 24 bit. but converts it to 16) You're confusing pitch with higher sample rates. Pitch is only the measurement of the tonal frequencies of the audio. You're probably confused because both can be expressed numerically in hertz and kilohertz. A hertz being a single tick/cycle per second.

Human hearing goes from roughly 20hz-22khz. With digital audio it was found that it was necessary to double the sample rate of the recording to achieve proper playback fidelity, and that's where the 44100 number was arrived at. Google Nyquist if you want to look into this more.

So you have it totally twisted, but I think it's good that you're curious about the technical side of things. When you've got a better understanding of that stuff, it always makes doing tracks easier.

no no i have understood those things. but think about it, 44100khz means we have 44100 samples played in one second, alright? when we play 48000 samples in one second, samples are closer to one another, meaning we have a higher pitched sound.

just as tapes, recording at higher speed means higher fidelity..when the tape is played back at standard speed we will hear our recording pitched up...what i want to say, is that a sound pitched up is of higher fidelity that the same sound in a lower pitch, because higher speed means more sound information in the same amount of time. i hope i am not comfusing.

so, my question is, even if the mpc samples at 44100khz, it also limits its playback at 44100 khz?

tosfalma wrote:no no i have understood those things. but think about it, 44100khz means we have 44100 samples played in one second, alright? when we play 48000 samples in one second, samples are closer to one another, meaning we have a higher pitched sound.

just as tapes, recording at higher speed means higher fidelity..when the tape is played back at standard speed we will hear our recording pitched up...what i want to say, is that a sound pitched up is of higher fidelity that the same sound in a lower pitch, because higher speed means more sound information in the same amount of time. i hope i am not comfusing.

so, my question is, even if the mpc samples at 44100khz, it also limits its playback at 44100 khz?

No, the higher sample rates are just more bits to accurately digitally transcribe and reproduce the sound. Sometimes in PC/Mac setups the mix of 44100khz and the higher sample rates in your DAW cause the audio driver to act up, and sounds will play back at improper pitches. You'll hear the pitch increase incrementally as you go up from 44/48/88/96/192khz, but it's because the audio driver isn't working properly, not because of sample rate being related to pitch. After your reset your interface/driver the pitch glitch goes away. Maybe your perceiving material at higher sample rates as having different pitch characteristics, simply because the audio is more detailed and has a different character than the same material at 16/44 for example.

Pitched up sounds with one ain't equal to double the 16bit 44.1 kHz quality. They're just pitched up at 44100 kHz. Play them at the original pitch (one octave below) and you got in reality a sound with 22.5 kHz frequency. Don't get that wrong though since pitching up the sound and playing the sounds one octave lower means that you can double the amount of samples you can load. Add some low pass filtering to get rid of the fizzling noise from the quality degradation. It sounds a bit rougher, but not as muffled as the Fairlight CMI did back in 1979 when it was released.

thanks for the answers guys. so, why when we pitch down a sound we can hear 22khz, but when we pitch up we are stuck in 44khz? it is somewhat into the hardware limitations?

tosfalma wrote:thanks for the answers guys. so, why when we pitch down a sound we can hear 22khz, but when we pitch up we are stuck in 44khz? it is somewhat into the hardware limitations?

44.1k is a hardware limitation of most mpcs.

'higher pitch' does not equal higher quality.

ok thanks for the answers..i assumed this from the standard trick "sample your sound at a higher pitch and then pitch it down to achieve the grit.." grit=lower samplerate, thus pitching up=greater samplerate..this was my way of thinking

tosfalma wrote:ok thanks for the answers..i assumed this from the standard trick "sample your sound at a higher pitch and then pitch it down to achieve the grit.." grit=lower samplerate, thus pitching up=greater samplerate..this was my way of thinking

not really.
watching a movie in fast forward doesn't make it high def, you know?

and again, the effect you are talking about is coming from the resampling, which any digital machine generally must do to maintain a steady sample rate.

I think he means that old SP-1200 trick where you sample a record playing at 45rpm and you pitch it down in the SP to achieve more sample space. Samples come out gritty because its a 12 bit machine not because it plays a lower fidelity.

In the old samplers, yes the frequency changes when you pitched down samples. Tuning down a sample by 50% can give it a fidelity of 11.24 khz and some samplers even allow you to change the grade to get that low of a frequency. But the new MPCs just sample and play at [email protected] with no option to degrade sound quality. This is why, old vintage samplers are sought-after because you can't get that sound anywhere else. Of course, there's VSTs and emulators but aint nothing like the real thing baby.

i know the trick he is talking about and that effect is due to resampling.
when you change the pitch of a digital sample, the machine resamples it. different gear does this differently and this creates artifacts and aliasing noise. thats what gives it 'that sound'. yes the sample rate is effectively reduced but all sounds on output get resampled to a constant sample rate.