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An Introduction To Digital Multimedia 2ND ED2

This document discusses the nature of sound and its digitization. It covers topics like sound waves, sampling, quantization, compression algorithms like MP3 and AAC, audio formats, and MIDI. The document is from a chapter on digital multimedia and focuses on the technical aspects of representing and manipulating sound digitally.

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Ahsan Sakhee
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99 views24 pages

An Introduction To Digital Multimedia 2ND ED2

This document discusses the nature of sound and its digitization. It covers topics like sound waves, sampling, quantization, compression algorithms like MP3 and AAC, audio formats, and MIDI. The document is from a chapter on digital multimedia and focuses on the technical aspects of representing and manipulating sound digitally.

Uploaded by

Ahsan Sakhee
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 24

Sound

Digital Multimedia, 2nd edition


Nigel Chapman & Jenny Chapman
Chapter 9

This presentation © 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 275–276

The Nature of Sound


• Conversion of energy into vibrations in the air
(or some other elastic medium)

• Most sound sources vibrate in complex ways


leading to sounds with components at several
different frequencies

• Frequency spectrum – relative amplitudes of


the frequency components

• Range of human hearing: roughly 20Hz–20kHz,


falling off with age

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 276–280

Waveforms
• Sounds change over time

• e.g. musical note has attack and decay,


speech changes constantly

• Frequency spectrum alters as sound changes

• Waveform is a plot of amplitude against time


• Provides a graphical view of characteristics of
a changing sound
• Can identify syllables of speech, rhythm of
music, quiet and loud passages, etc

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 281–282

Digitization – Sampling
• Sampling Theorem implies minimum rate of
40kHz to reproduce sound up to limit of hearing

• CD: 44.1kHz

• Sub-multiples often used for low bandwidth


– e.g. 22.05kHz for Internet audio

• DAT: 48kHz

(Hence mixing sounds from CD and DAT will


require some resampling, best avoided)

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 283–285

Digitization – Quantization
• 16 bits, 65536 quantization levels, CD quality

• 8 bits: audible quantization noise, can only use


if some distortion is acceptable, e.g. voice
communication

• Dithering – introduce small amount of random


noise before sampling

• Noise causes samples to alternate rapidly


between quantization levels, effectively
smoothing sharp transitions

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 283–284

Undersampling & Dithering

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 287

Data Size
• Sampling rate r is the number of samples per
second

• Sample size s bits

• Each second of digitized audio requires rs/8


bytes

• CD quality: r = 44100, s = 16, hence each


second requires just over 86 kbytes (k=1024),
each minute roughly 5Mbytes (mono)

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 287–288

Clipping
• If recording level is set
too high, signal
amplitude will exceed
maximum that can be
recorded, leading to
unpleasant distortion

• But if level is set too


low, dynamic range will
be restricted

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 289

Sound Editing
• Timeline divided into tracks

• Sound on each track displayed as a waveform

• 'Scrub' over part of a track e.g. to find pauses

• Cut and paste, drag and drop

• May combine many tracks from different


recordings (mix-down)

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 290–295

Effects and Filters


• Noise gate
• Low pass and high pass filters
• Notch filter
• De-esser
• Click repairer
• Reverb
• Graphic equalizer
• Envelope Shaping
• Pitch alteration and time stretching
• etc

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 295

Compression
• In general, lossy methods required because of
complex and unpredictable nature of audio data

• CD quality, stereo, 3-minute song requires over


25 Mbytes

• Data rate exceeds bandwidth of dial-up


Internet connection

• Difference in the way we perceive sound and


image means different approach from image
compression is needed

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 296–297

Companding
• Non-linear quantization

• Higher quantization
levels spaced further
apart than lower ones

• Quiet sounds
represented in greater
detail than loud ones

• µ-law, A-law

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 297

ADPCM
• Differential Pulse Code Modulation

• Similar to video inter-frame compression

• Compute a predicted value for next sample,


store the difference between prediction and
actual value

• Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation

• Dynamically vary step size used to store


quantized differences

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 298–299

Perceptually-Based
Compression
• Identify and discard data that doesn't affect the
perception of the signal

• Needs a psycho-acoustical model, since ear


and brain do not respond to sound waves in a
simple way

• Threshold of hearing – sounds too quiet to hear

• Masking – sound obscured by some other sound

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 299

The Threshold of Hearing

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 300

Masking

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 300

Compression Algorithm
• Split signal into bands of frequencies using
filters
• Commonly use 32 bands
• Compute masking level for each band, based on
its average value and a psycho-acoustical
model
• i.e. approximate masking curve by a single
value for each band
• Discard signal if it is below masking level
• Otherwise quantize using the minimum number
of bits that will mask quantization noise

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 300–301

MP3
• MPEG Audio, Layer 3
• Three layers of audio compression in MPEG-1
(MPEG-2 essentially identical)
• Layer 1 →Layer 3, encoding proces increases in
complexity, data rate for same quality
decreases
• e.g. Same quality 192kbps at Layer 1,
128kbps at Layer 2, 64kbps at Layer 3
• 10:1 compression ratio at high quality
• Variable bit rate coding (VBR)

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 301

AAC
• Advanced Audio Coding

• Defined in MPEG-2 standard, extended and


incorporated into MPEG-4

• Not backward compatible with earlier standards

• Higher compression ratios and lower bit rates


than MP3

• Subjectively better quality than MP3 at the


same bit rate

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 302

Audio Formats
• Platform-specific file formats

• AIFF, WAV, AU

• Multimedia formats used as 'container formats'


for sound compressed with different codecs

• QuickTime, Windows Media, RealAudio

• MP3 has its own file format, but MP3 data can
be included as audio tracks in QuickTime
movies and SWFs

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 303–304

MIDI
• Musical Instruments Digital Interface
• Instructions about how to produce music, which
can be interpreted by suitable hardware and/or
software
• cf. vector graphics as drawing instructions
• Standard protocol for communicating between
electronic instruments (synthesizers, samplers,
drum machines)
• Allows instruments to be controlled by
hardware or software sequencers

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 304

MIDI and Computers


• MIDI interface allows computer to send MIDI
data to instruments
• Store MIDI sequences in files, exchange them
between computers, incorporate into
multimedia
• Computer can synthesize sounds on a sound
card, or play back samples from disk in
response to MIDI instructions
• Computer becomes primitive musical
instrument (quality of sound inferior to
dedicated instruments)

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 305

MIDI Messages
• Instructions that control some aspect of the
performance of an instrument

• Status byte – indicates type of message

• 2 data bytes – values of parameters

• e.g. Note On + note number (0..127) + key


velocity

• Running status – omit status byte if it is the


same as preceding one

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions


9 306

General MIDI
• Synths and samplers provide a variety of voices

• MIDI Program Change message selects a new


voice, but mapping from values to voices is not
defined in the MIDI standard

• General MIDI (addendum to standard) specifies


128 standard voices for Program Change values

• Actually GM specifies voice names, no


guarantee that identical sounds will be
produced on different instruments

© 2004, MacAvon Media Productions

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