Lesson 3 Digital Audio - Posted on 2012-09-24 by Joey Greco

Date of session 9-14-2012

Time in: 10:00am
Time out: 5:00pm  (internship + lesson day)

Lesson 3 Digital Audio

Today's lesson dealt with the process and chain of digital audio. I learned the following; digital language = binary system, what sampling is, what a sampling rate is, how a signal can be changed when increasing or decreasing a sampling rate, the nyquist theorem, what a low pass filter is, what a BIT is, the chain of digital recording and reproduction, and converters. The most exciting thing was the chain of digital recording, which is as follows; 1) source, 2) preamp, 3) converter, which changes analog to digital, 4) CPU storage, 5) D/A converter, 6) console, 7) speakers. I found this information to be most applicable to my career in engineering. Also, Andy was able to describe troubleshooting techniques that could happen when something in this chain is not functioning correctly or why one would hear clicks, humming, and/or rumble.

Another interesting topic that we discussed was what and how sampling rate is. Andy described it to me as being very similar to a flip picture book and cinematography. Where the sampling rate is a capture of a specific points of an electric signal (voltage), and those points are then translated into binary code for storage in the cpu. However, what we are hearing is a reproduction of that particular binary code.