Audio Fundamentals: Index

An occasional series on audio fundamentals for those who find themselves working or playing with digital audio and want to know a little more about how it all works behind the scenes.

This index lists the topics covered in each part. To open a part, simply click the title.

Part One: The Nature of Sound and its Electrical Analogue

• Introduction
• What is sound?
• The representation of sound in an electrical circuit

Part Two: The Digital Representation of Sound

• Waveforms
• Amplitude
• Peak-to-peak amplitude
• Wavelength
• Frequency
• Digital representation of sound
• Analogue-to-digital and digital to analogue converters
• Sampling
• Interpolation of waveforms
• Sampling rate
• Aliasing
• Nyquist rate
• Sample resolution

Part Three: Additive Synthesis

• Periodic and aperiodic waveforms
• Fundamental frequency
• Overtones
• The sine wave
• Frequency spectrum
• Combining sine waves
• The phase of a signal
• Phase cancellation
• Beating
• Partials
• The harmonic series
• Additive synthesis
• The triangle wave
• The square wave
• The sawtooth wave

Part Four: Pulse Waves and Noise (Coming soon…)