Digital Audio

Teppo Räisänen
LIIKE/OAMK
General Information
 Auditive information is transmitted by
vibrations of air molecules
 The speed of sound waves is around
340 m/s
 The basic unit of the sound is Hertz
(Hz)
General Information
 The human ear’s hearing range is
somewhat between 20 – 20 000 Hz
 The energy unit of a sound is Decibel (dB)
 Human speech ~ 50 dB
 Pain treshold ~ 130 dB
 Nuclear explosion ~ 250 dB
 The heard result of a sound is also
affected by the harmonic qualities of the
sound wave
Digital Audio
 By nature all the sound waves are of
analog kind
 For computer to process audio an
analog-to-digital conversion is needed
(A/D)
 For producing a heard result a vice
versa operation (D/A) is needed
Digital Audio
Sampling Rate
 = amount of samples from the analog
signal / one second
 The lower the sampling rate, the lower
the quality of the signal
 CD records: 44100 Hz
 GSM phone call: 8000 Hz
 The greater the sampling rate, the bigger
the audio file size
Resolution
 = the amount of digital signal levels /
one sample
 Declared in bit value, e.g. 16 bit results
in 65536 possible signal levels
 Examples:
 CD record: 16bit
 GSM phone call: 8bit
Sound Quality & File Sizes
 Stereophonic (stereo) sound refers to any method of
sound reproduction in which an attempt is made to
create an illusion of directionality and audible
perspective.
 This is usually achieved by using two or more independent
audio channels through a configuration of two or more
loudspeakers in such a way as to create the impression of
sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing.
 Thus the term "stereophonic" applies to so-called
"quadraphonic" and "surround-sound" systems as well as
the more common 2-channel, 2-speaker systems.
Sound Quality & File Sizes
 It is often contrasted with monophonic, or
"mono" sound, where audio is in the form of
one channel
 often centered in the sound field (analogous to a
visual field).
 Stereo sound is now common in
entertainment systems such as broadcast
radio and TV, recorded music and the
cinema.
Sound Quality & File Sizes
 Sound files of good quality are often
quite large:
 One minute of 44100hz, 16-bit stereo
audio = 10,1 Mb
 One minute of 22050hz, 8-bit mono audio
= 1,3 Mb
 One minute of 11025hz, 8-bit mono audio
= 0,6 Mb
Compressed File Formats
 There are both compressed and
uncompressed audio file formats
 Compression can be either
 Lossless = The quality of uncompressed audio
equals the quality of original audio file
 Lossy = The quality of uncompressed audio is
lower than the original (e.g. mp3, wma)
 For compression/uncompression matching
algorighm pairs (codecs) are used
Codecs
 There must be one algorithm for
compressing and one for de-
compressing (e.g. before playback)
 Many codecs have to be installed as
plugins for player/editing applications
 There are many dedicated sites for
downloading codecs
Wave/WAV
 The uncompressed audio format
developed by Microsoft
 Wav files can be either mono or stereo
files and of different sample rates and
resolutions
 Many platforms support wav files
UNIX/NeXT audio (.au)
 ”Original” format of networked audio
 Many early versions of browsers and
programming languages (e.g. Java)
support au-files
 Au was originally developed by Sun
AIFF
 Audio Interchange File Format
 Originally the sound format of Amiga &
Apple computers
 AIFF file consists of so-called chunks in
which the qualities of audio + the
actual audio data are stored
MPEG (mp3)
 Nowadays very popular compressed audio
format
 Mp3 is one of the subcategories of MPEG
standard
 Mpeg 1 Layer 3 (mp3) was originally
targeted for transmitting speech over
networks
 Several settings can be adjusted when
packaging audio into mp3 format
RealAudio
 .ra/.rm files
 The first audio format to use streaming
technology
 The sound file can be listened while it is
been streamed into the harddrive (The
complete file doesn’t need to be loaded)
 Many internet radio stations use
ReadAudio as the broadcasting format
Other Audio Formats
 Besides the aforementioned there are
may audio formats for different uses:
 WMA
 Ogg
 Monkey’s Audio (.ape)
 FLAC
 In addition the audio editors produce
files which include project information
+ actual audio data