Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart) / quote 62 of 171
Sampling and quantization: from analog to digital
Analog signals are known as “continuous” and digital signals are called “discrete.” This distinction simply means that analog signals vary continuously in time, while discrete signals are chopped up into separate units at each time point—which is otherwise known as the sample rate. The basic idea when moving from continuous signals to discrete ones is that the continuous signal must be sampled at specific points in time and assigned at each time point a numerical value within a finite number system, so that it can be represented in binary numbers and with a finite number of digits, and therefore be used by a computer. This process is otherwise known as quantization. For use in a computer we must quantify things that do not have intrinsic numerical values. This means that instead of differences in air pressure, the digital sound is now made of thousands of binary numbers represented by…