Category Archives: Sampling Theory

Sampling theory, the best explanation you’ve ever heard—End notes

A few words before moving on to other topics… We’ve looked at why digital sample represent ideal impulses, and why any point between samples represents a value of zero. And, as a result, audio samples don’t represent the audio itself, … Continue reading

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Sampling theory, the best explanation you’ve ever heard—Part 3

We look at what Pulse Amplitude Modulation added to our analog source audio. What did PAM add? Earlier, we noted that the PAM signal represents the the source signal plus some additional high frequency content that we need to remove … Continue reading

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Sampling theory, the best explanation you’ve ever heard—Part 2

In this article, we explore the origins of sampling. Discrete time For many, discrete time and digital sampling are synonymous, because most people have little experience with discrete time analog. But perhaps you’ve used an old-style analog delay stompbox, with … Continue reading

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Sampling theory, the best explanation you’ve ever heard—Part 1

I’ll start by giving away secrets first: Individual digital samples are impulses. Not bandlimited impulses, ideal ones. We know what lies between samples—virtual zero samples. Audio samples don’t represent the source audio. They represent a modulated version of the audio. … Continue reading

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Sampling theory, the best explanation you’ve ever heard—Prologue

I’ve been working on a new video, with the goal of giving the best explanation of digital sampling you’ve ever heard. The catch is I started on it three years ago. I’m not that slow, it’s just that I’ve been … Continue reading

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Sampling in-depth

Here we lay the foundation. We’ll look at analog to digital conversion, and we’ll look at the spectrum of the resulting digital signal. We’ll use that knowledge to help understand the conversion process back to analog. Though we can build … Continue reading

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