LECTURE 4

THE USES OF DIGITAL AUDIO IN

MULTIMEDIA

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 Objective

● What is sound?
• Waveforms and attributes of sound
● Capturing digital audio
• Sampling
● MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital
Interface)

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 Sound
❑ Sound comprises the spoken word, voices, music and
even noise.

❑ It is a complex relationship involving a vibrating object

(sound source), a transmission medium (usually air), a
receiver (ear) and a preceptor (brain). Example
banging drum.

❑ As the sound vibrates it bumps into molecules of the

surrounding medium causing pressure waves to travel
away from the source in all directions

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 Sound
❑ So, Sound are rapid vibrations that are transmitted as
variations in air pressure.
❑ Acoustics is the study of sound: generation,
transmission, and reception of sound waves.

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 Waveforms
❑ Sound waves are manifest as waveforms
❑ A waveform that repeats itself at regular intervals is

called a periodic waveform

❑ Waveforms that do not exhibit regularity are called

noise

❑ The unit of regularity is called a cycle

❑ This is known as Hertz (or Hz) after Heinrich Hertz

❑ One cycle = 1 Hz

❑ Sometimes written as kHz or kiloHertz (1 kHz =

1000 Hz)

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Waveforms

Time for one

cycle
distance
along wave
Cycle

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 The characteristics of sound waves
❑ Sound is described in terms of two characteristics:
❑ Frequency

❑ Amplitude (or loudness)

❑ Frequency
❑ the rate at which sound is measured

❑ Number of cycles per second and is measured in

Hertz (Hz) or cycles per second.

❑ Human hearing frequency range: 20Hz to 20 kHz

❑ Determines the pitch of the sound as heard by our

ears
❑ The higher frequency, the clearer and sharper the

sound, the higher pitch of sound

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 The characteristics of sound waves
❑ Amplitude
❑ Sound’s intensity or loudness

❑ The measure of displacement of the air pressure

wave from its mean.

❑ The louder the sound, the larger amplitude.

❑ In addition, all sounds have a duration and successive

musical sounds is called rhythm

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The characteristics of sound waves

Amplitude Time for one

cycle
pitch distance
along wave
Cycle

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 Example waveforms

Piano

Pan flute

Snare drum

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 Capture and playback
of digital audio
Air pressure
variations Digital to
Analogue
Converter
Converts
back into
Captured via voltage DAC
microphone

Signal is
converted into
binary
Analogue (discrete form)
to Digital ADC 0101001101 Air pressure
Converter 0110101111 variations

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 The Analogue to Digital
Converter (ADC)
❑ An ADC is a device that converts analogue signals into
digital signals

❑ An analogue signal is a continuous value

❑ It can have any single value on an infinite scale

❑ A digital signal is a discrete value

❑ It has a finite value (usually an integer)

❑ An ADC is synchronised to some clock

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 The Analogue to Digital
Converter (ADC)
❑ It will monitor the continuous analogue signal at a set rate
and convert what it sees into a discrete value at that
specific moment in time

❑ The process to convert the analogue to digital sound is

called Sampling. Use PCM (Pulse Code Modulation)
to digitally represent sampled analog signals.

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Digital sampling
Sampling frequency

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Digital sampling
Sampling frequency

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 Sampling

❑ Two parameters:

Sampling Rate
❑ Frequency of sampling (number of samples per second)
❑ Measured in Hertz
❑ For audio, typical sampling rate are from 8 kHz to 48 kHz
❑ The higher sampling rate, higher quality sound but size storage is
big.
❑ Standard Sampling rate:
- 44.1 KHz for CD Audio
- 22.05 KHz Low Grade Audio (WWW Audio, AM Radio)
- 11.025 KHz for spoken (Telephone 8 kHz)

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 Sampling

Size sample
The resolution of a sample is the number of bits it uses
to store a given amplitude value, e.g.
❑ 8 bits (256 different values)
❑ 16 bits (65536 different values)
❑ A higher resolution will give higher quality but will require more
memory (or disk storage)

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 Quantisation
❑ Samples are usually represented the audio sample
as a integers(discrete number) or digital

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 Calculating the size
of digital audio
❑ The formula is as follows:

❑ The answer will be in bytes

❑ Where:
❑ sampling rate is in Hz

❑ Duration/time is in seconds

❑ resolution is in bits (1 for 8 bits, 2 for 16 bits)

❑ number of channels = 1 for mono, 2 for stereo, etc.

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 Calculating the size
of digital audio
❑ Example:
Calculate the file size for 1 minute, 44.1 KHz, 16 bits,
stereo sound

❑ Where:
❑ sampling rate is 44,100 Hz

❑ Duration/time is 60 seconds

❑ resolution is 16 bits

❑ number of channels for stereo is 2

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Calculating the size
of digital audio

44100 * 60 * 16 *2
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 Digital audio editing software
❑ One of the most powerful and professional PC-based
packages is a tool called Sound Forge

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/

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 Editing Digital Audio
❑ Trimming
❑ Splicing and assembly
❑ Volume adjustments
❑ Format conversion
❑ Resampling or downsampling
❑ Fade ins and fade outs
❑ Equalization
❑ Time Stretching
❑ Digital Signal processing
❑ Reversing Sounds

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 Editing Digital Audio
❑ Simple audio editing software allows:
❑ Recording of digital audio segments
❑ Trimming
❑ Splicing and assembly
❑ Volume adjustments of the entire segment
❑ Reversing Sounds
❑ Copy, cut, paste and delete segments of digital audio

❑ Others audio editing software:

❑ COOL Edit Pro
❑ Gold Wave
❑ PROSONIQ SonicWORX
❑ Samplitude Studio
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 Audio formats
❑ Depend on O/S. For examples:

❑ AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format)

❑ SOU
❑ For Macintosh

❑ .WAV
❑ Waveform file format. For Windows/Microsoft

❑ .VOC
❑ Sound Blaster Card

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 MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital
Interface)
❑ MIDI is a standard for specifying a musical performance

❑ Rather than send raw digital audio, it sends instructions

to musical instruments telling them what note to play, at
what volume, using what sound, etc.

❑ The synthesiser that receives the MIDI events is

responsible for generating the actual sounds. Example:
Keyboard Piano

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 MIDI sequencers
● A MIDI sequencer
allows musicians to
edit and create
musical
compositions like a
word processor
• Cut and paste
• Insert / delete

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 MIDI Versus Wav
❑ Quality recording, MIDI depend to the tools
❑ Audio .wav easier to create compare than MIDI

❑ MIDI Advantages
❑ File Size small
❑ Size Storage also small

❑ MIDI Advantages
❑ Playback
❑ Cost and Skill

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 How audio can be used effectively
Examples of uses of audio:

❑ Cautions and warnings

It is a good medium for alerting users to critical
information. Some uses include:
❑ Sounding an alarm when a limit is reached

❑ Alerting users when data is entered incorrectly

❑ Music and Sound Effects

These make multimedia interaction more real. Some
uses include:

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 How audio can be used effectively
❑ Musical background for a video segment
❑ Birds Songs accompanying photographs in biological
field training.

❑ Sound-related data.
Some uses include:
❑ Helping mechanics diagnose engine trouble

❑ Training medical students to recognize different

breathing sounds

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 How audio can be used effectively
❑ Direct voice communication.
Some uses include:
❑ Leaving a voice message for other users of an

application
❑ Consulting with an expert during a troubleshooting

procedure.

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 Advantages and Disadvantages
of using audio
Sound adds life to any multimedia application and plays
important role in effective marketing presentations.

❑ Advantages

❑ Ensure important information is noticed

❑ Add interest

❑ Can communicate more directly than other media

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 Advantages and Disadvantages
of using audio
❑ Disadvantages

❑ Easily overused

❑ Requires special equipment for quality production

❑ Not as memorable as visual media

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 Summary

❑ There are two main types of digital audio

❑ Sampled audio

❑ Captured by sampling an analogue waveform at a

set rate
❑ MIDI data

❑ Instructions on how to perform some musical

composition
❑ Sampled audio requires more storage space than MIDI
information

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