Reconstruction from Samples--Pictorial Version

Figure D.1 shows how a sound is reconstructed from its samples. Each sample can be considered as specifying the scaling and location of a sinc function. The discrete-time signal being interpolated in the figure is a digital rectangular pulse:

The sinc functions are drawn with dashed lines, and they sum to produce the solid curve. An isolated sinc function is shown in Fig.D.2. Note the ``Gibb's overshoot'' near the corners of the continuous rectangular pulse in Fig.D.1 due to bandlimiting. (A true continuous rectangular pulse has infinite bandwidth.)

Notice that each sinc function passes through zero at every sample instant but the one it is centered on, where it passes through 1.

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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.