Introduction to Sampling

Inside computers and modern ``digital'' synthesizers, (as well as music CDs), sound is sampled into a stream of numbers. Each sample can be thought of as a number which specifies the position^G.2of a loudspeaker at a particular instant. When sound is sampled, we call it digital audio. The sampling rate used for CDs nowadays is 44,100 samples per second. That means when you play a CD, the speakers in your stereo system are moved to a new position 44,100 times per second, or once every 23 microseconds. Controlling a speaker this fast enables it to generate any sound in the human hearing range because we cannot hear frequencies higher than around 20,000 cycles per second, and a sampling rate more than twice the highest frequency in the sound guarantees that exact reconstruction is possible from the samples.