Oversampling

Definition

The internal processing of audio at a multiple of the operating sample rate to reduce aliasing distortion introduced by non-linear processing such as saturation, distortion, and limiting. The signal is upsampled before processing and returned to the original sample rate after.

In Simple Terms

A technique plugins use internally to avoid digital artifacts when processing your audio. You don't need to do anything—just look for the oversampling option in your saturation or limiter plugin and enable it if your CPU can handle it.

In Practice

A saturation plugin running at 4x oversampling processes audio internally at 192 kHz before returning it to 48 kHz, preventing aliasing artifacts that the non-linear clipping algorithm would otherwise introduce.

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