44100

44100, commonly written as 44.1 kHz, refers to a sampling rate used in digital audio. In PCM systems, it specifies the number of audio samples captured per second per channel. A rate of 44,100 samples per second provides a nominal bandwidth of up to about 22.05 kHz, which is sufficient for most audible content when paired with appropriate anti-aliasing filters.

In standard CD-DA (compact disc digital audio), 44.1 kHz sampling is used with 16-bit samples in stereo, yielding a data rate of 1,411,200 bits per second (approximately 1.411 Mbps) for the raw PCM stream. This combination—44.1 kHz sampling, 16-bit depth, and two channels—defines the typical CD-quality audio stream.

Origin and technical context: The 44.1 kHz rate was defined in the Red Book CD-DA standard published in 1982 by Sony and Philips. It was chosen to balance the need for adequate audio bandwidth with practical clocking and data-handling considerations in early digital audio hardware. The CD system uses a master clock of 2.8224 MHz, which is 64 times the sampling rate, a relation that facilitated digital-to-analog conversion and store-and-forward processing in consumer electronics of the time.

Legacy and modern usage: The 44.1 kHz rate remains a de facto standard for music distribution and storage formats such as WAV, AIFF, and FLAC. For video and film work, 48 kHz is common, while higher rates like 88.2 kHz and 96 kHz are used in professional audio workflows. Many applications support converting between sample rates via resampling.