Talk:Digital audio

Diagram request
Would it be possible to get an image of the digitization process for audio - shows the waveform and how it's reconstructed digitally... I've seen them before but I haven't been able to find a diagram that's under a "free" license.

This [|MP3 Handbook Sample chapter] has diagrams like what I'm envisaging, but it's definately copyrighted! VoltageX 23:47, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

→I'll make one if someone will host it. 137.71.23.54 17:05, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Brett

Brett, I wish I'd seen this earlier - you can upload directly to Wikipedia, no hosting needed! VoltageX 02:46, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I would like an update on this, I want to see how sound can be represented as text in a file 111.172.56.90 (talk) 15:30, 24 April 2014 (UTC)


 * The Overview section now includes File:4-bit-linear-PCM.svg which I assume is the sort of diagram we were looking for here. ~Kvng (talk) 13:48, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Accuracy of the Digitization Process
Although the math is covered in the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem article, I think it's worth a mention that in a theoretical discrete-time system (not digital, mind you, just discrete-time), a signal can be perfectly sampled and reconstructed as long as it is band-limited by the Nyquist rate. Now, in real life there are higher harmonics we'd like to capture, and when the amplitude is quantized we get quantization noise, but I still think the Nyquist theorem should be highlighted here. 137.71.23.54 17:05, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Brett


 * I have added a link to Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem in the last paragraph of the Overview section. ~Kvng (talk) 14:07, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Interfaces
In the "Digital Audio Interfaces" list, I'm not sure that it's valid to list buses such as USB, FireWire and MIDI as "interfaces". Yes, these buses can "carry" digital audio, but isn't an interface defined as something more specific than that? Doesn't something need ADCs or DACs to be rightly called an interface? If the only requirement is that they "carry" audio, then you have to include every other bus, such as SCSI, NuBus, PCI, ISA, IDE, SATA, WiFi, Ethernet, and CardBus. Dementia13 (talk) 01:54, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * USB and FireWire mentions had been removed. I have expanded the last paragraph of this section to mention some of this. Sure, any digital data transport has the potential to carry digital audio. I have included the ones for which a specific provision for doing so has been engineered. ~Kvng (talk) 14:23, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Excess preamble
Was:

When the sound engineer wishes to listen to the recording on headphones or loudspeakers (or when a consumer wishes to listen to a digital sound file),

Changed to:

For playback,

Wiki Education assignment: Technology and Culture
— Assignment last updated by BlueWaterBottle67 (talk) 16:47, 16 September 2022 (UTC)