13 September 2022

1.2 Sound

Computer

Digital

Analogue

• A microphone receives sound (as waves) and this causes the diaphragm to vibrate.
• This in turn causes the coil to vibrate producing an electrical signal (voltage)
• The electrical signal that represents the sound waves are analogue. In other words these are
continuous data readings.
• Analogue signals cannot be stored in a computer system as the computer works on digital data
(discrete).
• The process of converting the sound signal from analogue to digital is known as digitising.
• To convert the signal from analogue to digital, the analogue signal is first broken down into equal
parts known as samples. This process is known as sampling.
• The diagram on the right shows a typical analogue
signal.
• A cycle is a record of the signal as shown and there
are many cycles per second.
• The number of cycles per second is known as Amplitude
frequency and this is measured in Hertz (Hz).
• There has to be a minimum frequency so that the
human ear can hear the sounds. The range that a
human ear can pick up easily is 20Hz to 20,000 Hz
(20kHz)

Example of sampling 1 cycle

Samples Samples
• The analogue signal is sampled (i.e., broken down) into equal parts (i.e., samples).
• Each sample is represented as a number, which is then stored in binary. This is known as the
sampling resolution.
• If we increase the samples per second, we could have a better sound quality that is closer to the
original sound.
 • By increasing the sampling rate, we may have better sound that
resembles the original, but it takes up more storage space in the
computer.
• The sample rate is also known as the sampling frequency. And
the higher the sampling rate, the better the sound quality.
• The value of each sample is stored as a binary pattern. The
number of bits used per sample will depend on the value of each
sample. Each sample will have the same number of bits. So the
sampling resolution will be determined by the value of the largest sample.
• Apart from the sampling data, there is other data that gets stored in a sound file. These include:
◦ header information such as bit depth/sampling resolution, file format, compression methods
used, software used to create the file, etc
◦ Meta data such as date of creation, last updated date/time, etc.

1.3 Compression
• Compression is the process of removing parts of a file or representing data in a manner so that it
takes up lesser storage space.
• There are 2 key methods of compression
◦ Lossy – Parts of the file/data are removed in order to reduce the file size. This is done in a
manner that does not compromise in the quality of the original. Due to the way this compression
is done, the original data cannot be restored/recreated.
◦ Lossless compression – No data is lost during compression, but the space it occupies is reduced.
This allows the original file to be reproduced.
• The type of compression used will depend on the type of data and nature of application.