Signals, Sample Rate and Resolution

The sound pressure generates electrical signals in the mic/meter which are captured by our
soundcard. The soundcard takes measurements of the electrical level at its input. Each
measurement is referred to as a sample. How often it takes its samples is controlled by the
sample rate

Rather than use the measurement numbers directly, it is convenient to refer to them in terms of
how close they are to the largest number, which is referred to as Full Scale and abbreviated as
FS. The full scale values are -32768 and +32767. The smallest non-zero measurement value is 1,
which as a percentage of full scale is 100*(1/32768) or approximately 0.003% FS. Anything
smaller than that is seen by the soundcard as zero.

For a 24-bit soundcard the full scale measurement values are -8388608 and +8388607. That still
is only 1 Volt (typically), the largest input voltage has not changed, but the 24-bit soundcard has
higher resolution - the smallest value it can detect is 100*(1/8388608) percent of full scale,
0.000012% FS. It is with the very smallest signals that higher resolution has benefits. The full
scale value is often treated as corresponding to a value of one, and everything below full scale as
being the corresponding proportion of one, so half full scale would be 0.5 and so on.

We are usually interested in more than just the sample values. The frequencies that make up the
signal may also be of interest. The range of frequencies that make up a signal is called its
Spectrum and we can calculate them using a Fast Fourier Transform or FFT. The FFT works out
the amplitudes and phases of a set of cosine waves that, when added together, would give the
same set of measurement values as the time signal. The amplitudes and phases of those cosine
waves are a different way of representing the time signal, in terms of the frequencies that make it
up rather than its individual measurement values. The amplitudes are easy to understand, a larger
amplitude means a bigger cosine wave. The phases indicate the starting value for the cosine
waves at the time of the first sample in the sequence that was measured. A phase of zero degrees
would mean the starting value was amplitude*cos(0) = amplitude. A phase of 90 degrees would
mean a starting value of amplitude*cos(90) = 0. We are more often interested in the amplitudes
than the phases, but we shouldn't forget about the phases entirely - they contain half the
information about the shape of the original time signal.