sampling depth: Sampling depth is a measure of how many distinctions can be made in a recording. While the sampling or sampling rate indicates how frequently information about the condition of a piece is requested, the sampling depth determines how high the steps are between two values. The smaller the steps, the finer the scanning and the smaller the differences that can be perceived.
The sampling depth contributes significantly to the quality of a recording. The material on an audioCD or a DVD has a depth of 16 bits. This makes it possible to reproduce tones on a scale with 65.536 gradations, with 65.536 representing the loudest value. The ones on the Blu-Ray The codecs used allow a maximum sampling depth of 24 bits, which results in 16.777.216 possible values. A high sampling depth together with a high sampling frequency increases the quality of a recording, but at the same time the amount of data and thus the required storage space also increase.