Dictionary of Computer and Internet Terms: sampling rate
sampling rate
the number of times per second that sound waves are sampled and digitized. The highest frequency that can be reproduced is half the sampling rate. High-fidelity audio is usually sampled at 44.1 kHz (44,100 samples per second) in order to reproduce frequencies up to 22.05 kHz, just above the limit of human hearing. Speech can be stored more compactly by sampling at a lower rate, 22.05 or 11.025kHz.
Another parameter is the number of bits of data stored in each sample. High-fidelity audio requires 16 bits per sample; speech can be reproduced adequately with 8 bits. One minute of sound, sampled at 44.1 kHz with 16 bits per sample, requires about 5 megabytes of disk space.
