Audio Waveforms.

Waveforms Introduction Sound is created by vibrations such as in a guitar string, vocal chord or speaker cone. These vibrations disturb the air molecules near them, forcing molecules together and raising the air pressure slightly. The air molecules that are under pressure then push on the air molecules surrounding them, which push on the next set of air molecules, and so on, causing an area of high pressure to move though the air. When these …

…sampled, each sample is assigned the amplitude value closest to the original analogue wave. With a resolution of 2 bits, each sample can have 1 of only 4 possible amplitude positions. With 3 bit resolution, each sample has 8 possible amplitude values. Higher bit depth means a lower noise floor and higher fidelity. CD quality is 16 bit which means that each sample has 65,536 possible amplitude values. DVD quality sound has 24 bit which means that each sample has 16,777,216 possible amplitude values.