Category Archives: Digital Audio

Towards practical resampling

In a previous article, we looked at sample rate conversion in the frequency domain. Let’s take a quick second look in the time domain as reinforcement of principles behind sample rate conversion, before developing a practical rate convertor. In an … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Audio, Filters, FIR Filters, Impulse Response, Sample Rate Conversion | 7 Comments

The sound of dither

Dithering is about spreading errors out, so that they aren’t related to the sampled signal. A constant background hiss is easier to ignore than tones that change depending on signal frequencies and amplitude. Here’s a fixed-frequency sine wave, truncated to … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Audio, Dither | 7 Comments

Sample rate conversion

Here we explain how sample rate conversion works. As an essential prerequisite, you must understand the principals of sampling. Even if you understand sampling already, read our explanation of the process here. The viewpoint and terms used there are mirrored … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Audio, Sample Rate Conversion | 16 Comments

Sampling in-depth

Here we lay the foundation. We’ll look at analog to digital conversion, and we’ll look at the spectrum of the resulting digital signal. We’ll use that knowledge to help understand the conversion process back to analog. Though we can build … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Audio, Sampling Theory | 2 Comments

The bilinear z transform

The bilinear transform is the most popular method of converting analog filter prototypes in the s domain to the z domain so we can implement them as digital filters. The reason we are interested in these s domain filters is … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Audio, Filters, IIR Filters | 29 Comments

The digital state variable filter

The digital state variable filter was described in Hal Chamberlin’s Musical Applications of Microprocessors. Derived by straight-forward replacement of components from the analog state variable fiter with digital counterparts, the digital state variable is a popular synthesizer filter, as was its … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Audio, Filters, IIR Filters | 25 Comments

Biquads

One of the most-used filter forms is the biquad. A biquad is a second order (two poles and two zeros) IIR filter. It is high enough order to be useful on its own, and—because of coefficient sensitivities in higher order … Continue reading

Posted in Biquads, Digital Audio, Filters, IIR Filters | 34 Comments

Pole-Zero placement

Use the new, improved pole-zero calculator—but be sure to read the “Experiments with standard biquads” section below for tips on placing poles and zeros for standard filters. Here’s a Java applet that illustrates pole-zero placement. It lets you design a … Continue reading

Posted in Biquads, Digital Audio, Filters, IIR Filters, Widgets | 8 Comments

A gentle introduction to the FFT

Some terms: The Fast Fourier Transform is an algorithm optimization of the DFT—Discrete Fourier Transform. The “discrete” part just means that it’s an adaptation of the Fourier Transform, a continuous process for the analog world, to make it suitable for … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Audio, FFT | 11 Comments

A bit about reverb

Reverb is one of the most interesting aspects of digital signal processing effects for audio. It is a form of processing that is well-suited to digital processing, while being completely impractical with analog electronics. Because of this, digital signal processing … Continue reading

Posted in Convolution, Digital Audio, Impulse Response, Reverb | 11 Comments