Rafael Salgado Ribeiro

ANALOG TO DIGITAL CONVERSION

JUST A HELLO
Hi, my name is Rafael, Im from Brazil and Ill try to put some important aspects of the analog to digital conversion in some slides. I really hope you enjoy ! ;D

DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG

There are a couple differences between digital and analog information. A digital data (a.k.a. binnary data) is composed by zeros and ones, so computers can read and modify it. Historically, 0 corresponds to without energy and 1 to with energy, because that was the two status computers could understand, could measure. All the things a computer does is based in this two status. Each status is called a bit

ANALOG-DIGITAL CONVERSION
But, if we take our real world, its not based on 0 and 1. We have letters, sound, colors and a lot of other analog elements that computers do not understand. So, if we want to represent any of these elements in a computers we have to convert them into a language that it can process. To make that, we use a analog digital converter. It can be a microfone (converts sound waves to bits), a webcam (converts images to bits), a pc keyboard (convert letters to bits).

ANALOG-DIGITAL CONVERSION
When recording a sound with a pc, for example, there will be a analog-digital conversion. We have a wave that cant be represented as it is with digital information. So, the computer will try to put some points really near to the original wave. Look the image. We can see the analog wave (in white) and its representaion converted to digital (the red blocks):

ANALOG-DIGITAL CONVERSION: THE BIT DEPTH

When recording, we have some concepts that are important to know: Bit depth: its related to the amplitude we can reach. A larger bit depth will result in a wider dynamic range. The CD standard bit depth is 16. That means 2^16 possibilities for ajusting a analog amplitude to a pre-defined digital amplitude. When recording, we usually use a 24 bit depth, that gives us 2^24 possibilities. Its a large number.

ANALOG-DIGITAL CONVERSION: SAMPLING RATE

Sampling rate is how much times we measure the analog wave is going to be measured. Higher sampling rates will represent higher frequencies. The max frequency we can represent is often the half of the sampling rate. So, if we have a 40,000 Hz sampling rate, we can accurately represent 20,000 Hz, the highest frequency a human can hear. The CD standard is 44,100 Hz. That give us 22,050 Hz, more than any human can hear. The recording standard is 48,000 Hz. That gives us 24,000 Hz max frequency.

CONCLUSION
Theres a lot to say about analog-digital conversion. Some concepts, like how the computer make the conversion, what is sampling rate and bit depth and how these parameters change the sound are very, very important.