This post focuses on the basics of digital audio: sample rate, bitrate, and how analog signals are represented digitally.
We use digital audio all the time, but I am surprised on a fairly regular basis how many people are unclear about how digital audio works. Digital audio has two primary qualities that compose the way the audio is described. These two qualities correlate to the qualities of real world sounds more like metaphors than anything else. Real sounds have frequencies and volumes. In order to measure real world sounds and represent them digitally, we have created sample rate and bitrate as digital’s audio qualities. Sample rate determines how analog frequencies are described digitally whereas bitrate determines how analog volume is described digitally. The two qualities need each other in order to describe a sound. You can’t have volume without frequency or frequency without volume.
