Sammas
Well-known member
I understand the usual... Bit depth = amplitude. Sample rage = frequency. Nyquist's theorem. Truncation, dither and word length. The reason quantisation noise is always half the value of the least significant bit, which subsequently is why 1bit = 6dB of dynamic range... despite the fact that a lot of people take it literally as in 1 bit is actually designated to a certain 6dB of dynamic range.
One thing that baffles me is, the notion that 16bit converters use only 14bits and that 24bit converters use only 21bits, etc. Within computer science, the word length and resolution remains constant. IE: 0000 0011 or 0111 0011 are two eight bit values. Within PCM audio, both exist as a positive peak signal. The former is closer to . The latter is quite close to 0dbFS clipping.
This question is sparked by an interview with Daniel Weiss that I read: http://blog.georgenecola.com/interview-daniel-weiss/
I found this comment interesting: If I use my RME converters for 24 bit/44.1 kHz conversion, what sort of converter module is involved? Is it a 5 bit module that does 64 times oversampling?
Could be. One really cannot tell in general. In the past there were 1 bit Delta/Sigma converters, which did 64 times or 128 times oversampling. These were sampled down with appropriate noise-shaping. “24 bit” only tells us the amplitude of the word length at the converter output. This says nothing of the quality of the conversion. Some read 24 bit and think that it is TRULY 24 bits! This is not the case. Very good converters do well to have 20 bits of resolution!
Why is it?
One thing that baffles me is, the notion that 16bit converters use only 14bits and that 24bit converters use only 21bits, etc. Within computer science, the word length and resolution remains constant. IE: 0000 0011 or 0111 0011 are two eight bit values. Within PCM audio, both exist as a positive peak signal. The former is closer to . The latter is quite close to 0dbFS clipping.
This question is sparked by an interview with Daniel Weiss that I read: http://blog.georgenecola.com/interview-daniel-weiss/
I found this comment interesting: If I use my RME converters for 24 bit/44.1 kHz conversion, what sort of converter module is involved? Is it a 5 bit module that does 64 times oversampling?
Could be. One really cannot tell in general. In the past there were 1 bit Delta/Sigma converters, which did 64 times or 128 times oversampling. These were sampled down with appropriate noise-shaping. “24 bit” only tells us the amplitude of the word length at the converter output. This says nothing of the quality of the conversion. Some read 24 bit and think that it is TRULY 24 bits! This is not the case. Very good converters do well to have 20 bits of resolution!
Why is it?