About the digital audio notes

I've written these digital audio and signal processing discussions because I found it so difficult to find this kind of information when I had my own questions on the subject. Most textbooks overlook real-world implementations, or are so general (and theoretical) that it can be difficult to obtain a practical knowledge on your own. I hope that these notes give you a little insight into digital audio issues, and if your curiosity runs deeper, perhaps you'll dig further on your own. The web is a great source—hit the search engines and see what you can find!

This is a quick (fast as I could think and type) first pass at it. I hope to flesh it out with informational graphics and more topics as time permits. (I've started a note on the Fourier Transform, for instance, so perhaps that will join the collection soon.) I've tried to present an intuitive and practical approach to the explanations, because this is where the rigorous texts are lacking. And I've tried to be brief in order to not distract from the message (besides, this stuff could stretch into a book and a full time job if I let it!).

Please drop me an email message if you like the Digital Audio section and would like to see more. Feel free to make requests for new topics, and I'll consider them if they're something enough people would be interested in.

I can't answer implementation questions, though—I just don't have the time. (But I am available for consulting—I've developed and implemented DSP algorithms at the C and assembly language level, including 56000.)

Some books on the subject

If you want to know more, read books. Here are some good ones:

Theory and Application of Digital Signal Processing, Rabiner and Gold, 1975 (Prentice-Hall). A classic.

Multirate Digital Signal Processing, Crochiere and Rabiner, 1983 (Prentice-Hall). Another classic, particularly important for its expanded techniques for sample rate conversion.

Digital Signal Processing, A Practical Approach, Ifeachor and Jervis, 1993 (Addison-Wesley). This covers a lot of ground pioneered by the two books above. And, you can get actual C source code for some of the algorithms from the authors for a reasonable fee. I haven't spent a lot of time with this book, because I had already pieced much of the information from other sources before this one came out, but it looks like a good one.

Principles of Digital Audio, Second Edition, Pohlmann, 1985 and 1989 (Sams). Get this book for a good overall description of digital audio systems. I bought the first edition, and picked up the second edition when it came out for the added DAT description and other new details. Not heavy on hard-core theory, but it's easy to follow and describes things you use (how CD players work, etc.).

Advanced Digital Audio, Pohlmann (Editor), 1991 (Sams). Topics by several authors (including Pohlmann) that dig a little deeper than Principles of Digital Audio.

Musical Applications of Microprocessors, Chamberlin, 1980 (Hayden). A classic. This book covers many aspects of electronic music instruments, including microprocessor control of synthesizers, and making and processing music computationally, including practical development of digital synthesizers. It's before MIDI and before practical commercial digital synthesizers, but it's great for covering many practical aspects of analog and digital audio and instruments. There's a second edition out, but I don't know what was added for it.

Created Oct 21, 1996

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