Sample Rate

When you listen to digital audio, you are actually listening to many discrete 'samples' of sound.  Sample rate is a measure of the number of samples per second, and can be thought of as the resolution or accuracy of the audio.  A high sample rate means that the resolution of the recording is high, thus very "accurate".  Digital music is typically recorded at sample rates of 44.1kHz and higher.  Digital speech can use much lower sample rates without loss of sound quality.  High quality speech can be generated at 16kHz;  telephony applications use a sample rate of 8kHz.

One kiloHertz (kHz) is one thousand cycles per second.

For suggestions on choosing Bit Rates and Sample Rates for your audio files, see the Audio File Options panel help.