Digitisation of Audio

Sound and other analog data is generally represented as a transverse wave, and can be converted to
digital form by a process called sampling. The two important aspects of sampling are:

 Sampling size refers to the number of bits used to store each sample from the analog wave.
For example, an 8-bit sample can represent 256 (2 8 = 256) possible levels in a particular
sample. A higher sample size will result in increased accuracy, but higher data storage
requirements.
 Sampling rate refers to the number of samples or slices taken from the analog wave in one
second,. The higher the sampling rate, the better the representation of the initial analog
signal. If CD audio quality is required then a sampling rate of 44.1 Khz (44,100 samples per
second) is chosen.

For example, to calculate storage requirements of 2 minutes of CD quality mono sound:

CD audio uses 44.1 KHz sampling with 16-bit sample size.

Storage per sample = 16 bits

Storage per second = 16 x 44 100 bits

Storage per minute = 16 x 44 100 x 60 bits

Storage (2 minutes) = 16 x 44 100 x 120

Storage (1 minute) = 84 672 000 bits

Total storage = 10, 584 000 bytes

Total storage = 10.09 MB

*Storage sound doubles the storage requirements, so multiply by 2.