Bit Scaling Audio Streams

1. What is bit resolution in audio?
2. How does bit depth affect sound quality?
3. What is 16bit PCM?
4. What is bit depth in digital audio?

What is bit resolution in audio?

In digital audio, a value called bit depth describes the resolution of the sound data that is captured and stored in an audio file. A higher audio bit depth indicates a more detailed sound recording. Similarly, for image and video files, bit depth is used to determine the resolution of a picture.

How does bit depth affect sound quality?

The higher the bit depth, the more data will be captured to more accurately re-create the sound. If the bit depth is too low, information will be lost, and the reproduced sample will be degraded. For perspective, each sample recorded at 16-bit resolution can contain any one of 65,536 unique values (216).

What is 16bit PCM?

Thus, a 16-bit system has a resolution of 65,536 (2¹⁶) possible values. Integer PCM audio data is typically stored as signed numbers in two's complement format. Today, most audio file formats and digital audio workstations (DAWs) support PCM formats with samples represented by floating point numbers.

What is bit depth in digital audio?

Bit depth in digital audio is one of the settings that affects the recording's overall resolution. In technical terms, it's the actual number of bits (binary digits) in each sample.