Matters Concerning Audio - A Practical Guide to Video and Audio Compression - page 157

Table 7-1 Dynamic Range Versus Word Size

Word size 2 Word size Dynamic range

8 bits 256 48 dB

10 bits 1024 60 dB

12 bits 4096 72 dB

16 bits 65536 96 dB

20 bits 1048576 120 dB

24 bits 16777216 144 dB

The quietest sound would be total silence, but in fact there would be some kind of
background noise introduced by the DAC even at that level.

7.4.4 Quantization Problems

Increasing the number of steps available also decreases noise that is due to quantization
errors. A digitizer rounds the measured value to the nearest increment. It is possible to

Truncation errors

Overshoot errors

Figure 7-8 Quantization errors.