Audio 401

Topic Handout

Intro to Digital Audio

© 2011 SAE Education Ltd. | Subject to change without notice! INSTITUTE
Table of Contents
Introduction to Digital Audio __________________________________1
Analogue vs. Digital Audio __________________________________1
Analogue to Digital Conversion (ADC) __________________________1
Sampling ____________________________________________1
Sample / Sampling Rate ________________________________1
Quantization _________________________________________1
Bit Depth / Rate _______________________________________2

© 2011 SAE Education Ltd. | Subject to change without notice!

 Introduction to Digital Audio
Analogue vs. Digital Audio

Analogue Audio
In analogue audio, acoustic pressure is transduced (‘translated’) continuously
into an electrical voltage - ‘time-continuous form’.
The voltage is analogous to the original sound pressure waveform i.e.
changes in voltage mimic pressure fluctuations, with variations that may be
infinitely small.
Analogue storage media must store a continuous, infinitely varying stream of
values.

Digital Audio
The original waveform is broken up into a finite number of steps and these are
assigned a specific value, describing a voltage – ‘time-discrete form’.

Analogue to Digital Conversion (ADC)

There are two main aspects to analogue to digital conversion: sampling and
quantization.

Sampling
Sampling is the process of describing continuously changing voltages in a
time discrete form i.e. instantaneous voltage levels (samples measured at
regular intervals).
The number of voltage measurements / ‘samples’ taken each second is
called the sample (or sampling) rate.

Sample / Sampling Rate

• Voltage readings are taken many times per second. The frequency at
which these readings are taken is called the sample / sampling rate.
e.g. the sample rate of 44.1kHz = 44100 readings per second.
• Sampling rates are chosen so that any event that could occur
between readings would be too high in frequency for the human ear
to detect / perceive.

Quantization
When voltage readings are ‘rounded’ to the nearest quantizing level The
quantized values fit within a pre-specified series of voltage levels called
quantae.

The number of quantae steps available in a digital system is proportional to

the bit depth of the latter.
© 2011 SAE Education Ltd. | Subject to change without notice! 1
 Bit Depth / Rate
• If a digital audio system has ‘n’-bit resolution, ‘n’ binary digits are
available to describe voltages or amplitude.
• The higher the bit rate the more possible values may be represented
(more definition).
• In the case of an 8-bit system 256 discrete values are available
(0-255). In the case of a 16-bit system 65536 discrete values are
available (0-65535).

© 2011 SAE Education Ltd. | Subject to change without notice! 2