Digital Show & Tell: digital audio signals and how they really behave

“Hi, I’m Monty Montgomery from Red Hat and Xiph.Org.

“A few months ago, I wrote an article on digital audio and why 24bit/192kHz music downloads don’t make sense. In the article, I mentioned—almost in passing—that a digital waveform is not a stairstep, and you certainly don’t get a stairstep when you convert from digital back to analog.

“Of everything in the entire article, that was the number one thing people wrote about. In fact, more than half the mail I got was questions and comments about basic digital signal behavior. Since there’s interest, let’s take a little time to play with some simple digital signals. ”