Digital audio capture is governed by sampling rate and bit depth

Evidence

The digitizer usually samples the instantaneous voltage amplitude of a continuously varying analog input signal that results from a microphone output where the time-varying voltage is proportional to the sound pressure. The digital representation of a signal produced by a digitizer is represented by a sequence of numeric values, evenly distributed, that represents the amplitude of the original waveform (Fig. 9.6). … Two parameters are involved in the A/D process: the sampling rate or sampling frequency (SR) and the number of bits used to represent each amplitude (sample size or bit depth). Commercial digital audio applications usually utilize sample rates of 44.1 kHz. — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology, 1948

Categorization

• DEFINE: Foundational method vocabulary: sampling rate and bit depth are the two quantitative levers every recording configuration sets.
• XREF: Direct methodological backbone for the reader’s role of this book — what autonomous recorders and spectral processors presuppose. — connects to: Higher bit depth reduces quantization noise by resolving more amplitude values — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology: Principles,…, 1959; Spectral analysis cannot achieve fine time and frequency resolution simultaneously — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology: Principles,…, 1970; Converting continuous sound to digital requires time sampling then numeric quantization — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 323 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Converting continuous sound to digital requires time sampling then numeric quantization #expands (0.85) — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 323
• Digital audio must sample at least twice the highest frequency to capture it #expands (0.80) — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 487