I don't know how much help this is, but, yes, a standard CD is 44.1 and 16 bit. So, eventually, if its going on a CD, it will end up at that standard.
Not sure why some equipment is set at 48. Some old Soundblaster cards were set at 48 only. Would cause occasional problems when shared and used in a 44.1 projects.
I've heard that bit depth is more important relative to sound. I think the current standard for recording is at 44.1 and 24 bit. Of course, the bit depth will have to be dithered down to 16 bit for the general CD consumer.
Bill (deaf dunderkwac) has excellent knowledge in this area, so perhaps he'll chime in.
some one say my name lol?
quick rundown...
44.1 legacy standard for CD chosen at the time because it was the best compromise of the available technology.
...along comes digital audio-video recorders and a standard had to be chosen and it's hard to divide 44.1 into 30 fps (or, if you will, 29.97 frames per second (fps) rounded to 30 for teh easy math types such as meself) so somebody chose 48.
by the time rofessional digital video came along technology had surpassed the old CD standard and the techno's finally figured out that 16 bit was just too hard (cost-wise) to filter so they went for 24 bits. Important to remember that the bits are the number of slices taken each sample. 8-bits would have 256 slices and you can look up the rest <grin>. The filters have to smooth the transition between slices and during the record process, not allow any energy above 1/2 the sample-rate (otherwise aliasing would happen) The higher the sample rate, the easier it is to filter out the bad stuff) (the higher the bit-depth the easier it is to smooth the steps)
Many audio purists thought 44.1 @ 16-bit was <horribly> inadequate for sampling (recording) as all sorts of distortions were added to the signal so there was alot of experimentation done in the 90's.
recording a sound at 192kHz @24-bit is like passing the signal through a short piece of wire... there was no deterioration at all!
But it was later shown that most of the deterioration of the signal was happening in the filters (used to smooth the 'steps' of the slices
-Better filters were developed...
If you do this for a living I would hazard that recording at 96 or 192 kHz@ 24 bits would be 'the thing to do' but any bit rate 20 or above is easier on the golden-eared peoples of the world.
You can always down-sample (convert from 192 to 96 to 48) with impunity but if you up-sample you're not gaining anything. You cannot create bits that aren't there.
real-time Sample-rate converters (SRC) convert the digital signal to <gasp> analog then re-sample at the new rate (actually, they sound pretty good nowadays)
The above information is really only for those who sample (record) real instruments
I use vst's which don't have the same issues (instead they have other issues and I don't even
wanna discuss the vst's based on samples
)
hope this helps a little.
