Linear Number Systems

Linear number systems are used in digital audio gear such as compact disks and digital audio tapes. As such, they represent the ``high end'' of digital audio formats, when a sufficiently large sampling rate (e.g., above 40 kHz) and number of bits per word (e.g., 20), are used.

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Subsections

• Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)
• Binary Integer Fixed-Point Numbers
  • One's Complement Fixed-Point Format
  • Two's Complement Fixed-Point Format
  • Two's-Complement, Integer Fixed-Point Numbers
  
  
• Fractional Binary Fixed-Point Numbers
• How Many Bits are Enough for Digital Audio?
• When Do We Have to Swap Bytes?

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Order a Hardcopy of Mathematics of the DFT

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Next: Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

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written by Julius Orion Smith III
Julius Smith's background is in electrical engineering (BS Rice 1975, PhD Stanford 1983). He is presently Professor of Music and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), teaching courses and pursuing research related to signal processing applied to music and audio systems. See http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/ for details.