Digital Audio Fundamentals
By Mark Heath
Course info
Course info
Description
In order to work effectively with digital audio, whether as a computer programmer trying to use audio, or making your own recordings, it is essential to have a good grasp of the basic principles of digital audio. In this course, we will cover many of the foundational concepts such as sample rates, bit depths, decibels, clipping, headroom, effects, codecs, file formats, synthesis, and visualisations.
About the author
Mark Heath is a software developer based in Southampton, England, working for NICE Systems as a software architect creating cloud based digital evidence management systems for the police. He is the creator of NAudio, an open source audio framework for .NET.
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Section Introduction Transcripts
Audio File Formats
Hi, my name's Mark Heath. And in this module, we'll be looking at audio file formats. In our last module, we looked at sampled audio. And if you've got some sampled audio, it's very likely that at some point, you'll want to store it in an audio file. So we'll begin by introducing the various audio file format choices that you have. In particular, we'll look at the choice between whether you store your audio uncompressed as a PCM or whether you store it compressed using a codec. We'll look at a number of common audio file formats. In particular, the WAV file format, which is a very popular choice for storing uncompressed audio. And the MP3 file format, which is a very popular choice for storing compressed audio. And we'll introduce the concept of codecs. In particular, I've divided codecs into two broad categories. The first are called Lo-Fi, codecs that you might use for voice recordings. And the second are called Hi-Fi, codecs that you might use for music recordings.