The article "Digital Audio" describes the digital audio sampling process, and introduces some of its important terminology and concepts. Read this article and try to understand the meaning of the terms listed below. If you don’t understand the explanation of those terms in the article, do some research in additional resources to try to learn more about the things you don’t understand.
Vocabulary
simple harmonic motion
fundamental (resonant) mode of vibration
harmonics (overtones, partials)
harmonic series
spectrum
amplitude envelope
loudness, amplitude
pitch
frequency
decibel
analog-to-digital converter
digital-to-analog, converter
Nyquist theorem (Nyquist frequency)
sampling rate
aliasing/foldover
quantization
quantization precision
signal-to-quantization noise ratio (SQNR)
clipping
Self-Quiz
What is the sampling rate of CD-quality audio?
44,100 Hz
If the sampling rate is 48,000 Hz, what is the Nyquist frequency?
24,000 Hz
What is the range of frequencies that humans can hear as a tone?
20 Hz to 20,000 Hz
If an amplitude of 1 is used as the 0 dB reference, what amplitude is signified by -6 dB?
0.5
What adjective describes a tone that consists of frequencies that are all whole number multiples of the same fundamental frequency?