As you know,
- Normal human being can hear 20 Hz ~ 20,000 Hz sound.
- And from the Nyquist sampling theorem,
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The Nyquist sampling theorem provides a prescription for the nominal sampling interval required to avoid aliasing. It may be stated simply as follows:
The sampling frequency should be at least twice the highest frequency contained in the signal.Or in mathematical terms:
fs >= 2 * fc
(http://redwood.berkeley.edu/bruno/npb261/aliasing.pdf)In this reason, in the digital music need only 40 kHz sampling rate.
Why is 44.1 kHz sampling rate used in the world?
It is based on Video Tape,
1. http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/audio/44.1.html
2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/44,100_Hz