Discretizing a signal into levels is inherently lossy and produces error
Evidence
Quantization is the process of taking an audio or video signal and converting it to a discrete set of levels. The input to this process may be from a continuous audio signal, like the one you get from a microphone, or may be from an already quantized signal, for example, the signal from a compact disc. An important parameter is the number of levels in the quantizer. This is due to the fact that the act of quantization is lossy because it throws away information. If the input signal is not exactly the same as the desired output, there will be an error between the input and the output, as shown in Figure 7.50. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2653
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- DEFINE: Clean definition of quantization as the operation converting continuous signals to discrete levels, explaining why it is inherently lossy.
Related
- Quantization converts continuous signals to discrete levels and is lossy (similarity 0.93)
- Quantization always injects noise that lowers audio signal-to-noise ratio (similarity 0.87)
- Shaping quantization noise to sit 13 dB below the signal renders it inaudible (similarity 0.85)
- Quantization noise drops by 6 dB per added bit while hearing spans 130 dB (similarity 0.85)
- Quantizer levels need not be powers of two when entropy coding is used (similarity 0.84)
- Nonuniform quantizers reduce perceived noise by spacing levels of rare louder signals farther apart (similarity 0.83)
- Non-uniform quantization reduces audible noise by spacing levels by probability. (similarity 0.83)
- Uniform quantization noise requires about 60 dB signal-to-noise to stay masked (similarity 0.83)
- Each added quantization bit yields 6dB SNR improvement (similarity 0.82)
- Sine wave inputs achieve 1.76 dB better quantization SNR than uniform signals (similarity 0.81)
- Psychoacoustic quantization is the only stage in audio coding that removes signal information (similarity 0.81)
- Psychoacoustic quantization is the sole lossy stage in audio coding. (similarity 0.80)
- Higher bit depth reduces quantization noise by resolving more amplitude values (similarity 0.80)
- Logarithmic quantization suits speech but distorts music beyond tolerance (similarity 0.80)
- Loud-signal masking of weak signals enables bit-saving adaptive quantizers (similarity 0.80)
Broader Connections
- Shaping quantization noise to sit 13 dB below the signal renders it inaudible
#qualifies(0.85) — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2155