Learning Digital Audio

See also: Learning Synthesis

Reading:

    Cycling '74, How Digital Audio Works {C74} (Cycling '74 2025)

• Sound
• Simple harmonic motion
• Complex tones
• Harmonic tones
• Inharmonic tones and noise
• Amplitude envelope
• Amplitude and loudness
• Digital representation of sound
• Sampling and quantizing a sound wave
• Limitations of digital audio
• Sampling rate and Nyquist rate
• Precision of quantization
• Memory and storage
• Clipping
• Advantages of digital audio
• Synthesizing digital audio; Manipulating digital signals
  
  

Online Audio Reference:

Jeffery Hass, Introduction to Computer Music (Hass 2025)

1. Digital Audio Overview
• Max Mathews
• Harry Nyquist
• Claude Shannon
2. Binary Numbers
• Binary Numbers
• Bits and Bytes
• Digital encoding for Pulse Code Modulation
• Other Binary Terms You May Encounter
  
3. Samples and Sampling
• Analog-to-digital converter (ADC)
  
4. The Nyquist Frequency and Aliasing
5. Sampling Rates
• Anti-aliasing filter
  
• Rates: 44.1 kHz (CD), 48 kHz (DVD), 96 kHz, 192 kHz, 282.24 kHz
  
6. Quantizing, Approximation Errors and Sample Size
• Quantization
• Bit depth/resolution
• Pulse-code modulation (PCM)
• Quantizing error
  
• Signal-to quantization-noise-ration (SQNR)
• Sample rate  & frequency response
• Sample size (bit depth) & dynamic range
  
7. Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs)
8. Digital Audio File Formats
• Stereo: L/R
  
• Interleaved
• Split stereo
• Ambisonics
  
9. References

References

Ballora, Mark. 2017. Digital Audio and Acoustics for the Creative Arts. New York: Oxford University Press. {GB; TOC}

Burk, Phil, Larry Polansky, Douglas Repetto, Mary Roberts and Dan Rockmore. 2011. Music and Computers: A Theoretical and Historical Approach, Archival Version. <https://www.musicandcomputersbook.com>

Cycling '74. 2025. "How Digital Audio Works." Max 9 Documentation. Available online at: <https://docs.cycling74.com/learn/articles/02_mspdigitalaudio/>.

Hass, Jeffery. 2025. "Ch. 5 Digital Audio," in Introduction to Computer Music: An Electronic Textbook, 2nd ed. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University. Available online at: <https://cmtext.indiana.edu>.

Roads, Curtis. 2023. The Computer Music Tutorial, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. {2/e: GB; 1/e:GB}