Lexicon Sampling Rate

(Also called sampling frequency, sampling rate or sampling frequency) Specification of how many samples are made in one second when digitizing a signal. This determines which Bandwidth the sampled signal can have at most. The sampling theorem (Nyquist/Shannon), which is valid in this context, states that the bandwidth can comprise at most half the sampling rate.

As an example, the CD takes 44100 samples per second, which corresponds to a sampling rate of 44.1kHz and a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 22.05kHz. In practice, the bandwidth is somewhat lower due to non-ideal filtering - it is about 20kHz, and thus roughly encompasses the frequency range audible to the human ear.

See also:

• Wikipedia articles sampling rate and sampling theorem.