IT-101

Section 001

Introduction to Information
Technology
Lecture #9
Overview

Chapter 12
 Digital Audio

 Digitization of Audio Samples

 Quantization

 Reconstruction

 Quantization error
Digitization of Audio Samples
Step 2: Quantization
 Audio signals are continuous in time and amplitude
 Audio signal must be digitized in both time and amplitude to
be represented in binary form.
 Discrete in time by sampling – Nyquist
 Discrete in amplitude by quantization
 Once samples have been captured, they must be made
discrete in amplitude.

Step 1: Sampling Step 2: Quantization

The two step digitization process

Quantization
 Quantization
 Converts actual sample values (usually voltage
measurements) into an integer approximation
 Process of rounding off a continuous value so that it can
be represented by a fixed number of binary digits
 Tradeoff between number of bits required and error
 Human perception limitations affect allowable error
 Specific application affects allowable error
 Two approaches to quantization
 Rounding the sample to the closest integer.
 (e.g. round 3.14 to 3)
 Create a Quantizer table that generates a staircase pattern
of values based on a step size.
 Consider an audio signal with a voltage range between -10 and
+10
 Assume the audio waveform has already been time sampled, as
shown

 How can the amplitude also be converted into discrete values?

 For this example, let’s choose to represent each sample by 4 bits
 There are an infinite number of voltages
between -10 and 10.
 We will have to assign a range of voltages
to each 4-bit codeword.
 There will be 16 steps. Why?
 How large will each step be?
Reconstruction

 Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) provides the sampled and

quantized binary code.

 Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) converts the quantized

binary code back into an approximation of the analog
signal by clocking the code to the same sample rate as the
ADC conversion.

 Quantization and Reconstruction example on next two

slides:
QUANTIZATION
RECONSTRUCTION
Quantization Error
Quantization is only an approximation.

 After quantization, some information is lost

 Errors (noise) introduced
 The difference between the original sample value and the
rounded value is called the quantization error
 A signal to noise ratio (SNR) is the ratio of the relative sizes of
the signal values and the errors.
 The higher the SNR, the smaller the average error is with

respect to the signal value, and the better the fidelity.

Comments for next class
Chapter 13
 The Telephone System: wired and wireless

 Analog Telephone system

 Digital telephone system

 Cellular telephone system

Chapters Read So Far
Information Technology Inside and Outside
 Everyone should have read the following chapters thus
far:
 Chapter 1: What is the Information in the Information

Revolution?
 Chapter 3: Representing Information in Bits

 Chapter 4: The Need and Basis for Data Protocols

 Chapter 5: From the Real World to Images and Video

 Chapter 7: Compressing Information

 Chapter 8: Image Compression

 Chapter 9: Digital Video

 Chapter 10: Audio as Information

 Chapter 11: Sampling of Audio Signals

 Chapter 12: Digital Audio