Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Sampling
When music is recorded on a CD, it is sampled at a rate of 44,100 times per second (Hz).
Each music sample has a separate left and right channel (stereo) component, and each
channel component is digitally converted into a 16-bit number. This allows for a resolu-
tion of 65,536 possible values, which represents the amplitude of the sound wave for that
channel at that moment.
The sampling rate determines the range of audio frequencies that can be represented in
the digital recording. The more samples of a wave that are taken per second, the closer
the sampled result will be to the original. The Nyquist theorem (originally published by
