What does a higher sampling rate do in digital audio?

What does a higher sampling rate do in digital audio?

• A. The microphone sensitivity increases
• B. Data rate decreases
• C. Speech sounds are smoother and more accurately represented
• D. The file becomes mono

Answer: (C)

A higher sampling rate lets digital audio capture a wider range of frequencies and reconstruct the waveform more faithfully. With more samples per second, the digital representation holds more detail, so speech and other sounds come out smoother and more accurately represented when you play them back. The other statements don’t fit because microphone sensitivity is about how loud the mic’s output is, not how often you sample; increasing the sampling rate actually raises, not lowers, the data rate; and whether a file is mono or stereo depends on the number of channels, not the sampling rate.

A higher sampling rate lets digital audio capture a wider range of frequencies and reconstruct the waveform more faithfully. With more samples per second, the digital representation holds more detail, so speech and other sounds come out smoother and more accurately represented when you play them back. The other statements don’t fit because microphone sensitivity is about how loud the mic’s output is, not how often you sample; increasing the sampling rate actually raises, not lowers, the data rate; and whether a file is mono or stereo depends on the number of channels, not the sampling rate.