2010/4/10 Werner Van Belle werner@yellowcouch.org
Raymond Yau wrote:
The dynamic range of 16bit audio is 96dB http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range
Yes about that. I always wondered how they come up with 96dB ?
A perceived doubling of volume is normally assumed to be +3dB, (log_10(2)=0.3) which means that if you have 16 bit audio you have 16 'doublings', or in essence only 48 dB. Even worse, since the last bit is a sign bit, you essentially can only achieve a dynamic range of 45dB !
Now, I know this is off topic, but I never heard any good explanation why CD audio is suddenly 45 dB ? If anybody knows, please share your thoughts !
Wkr,
Even when you are using floating point number
Floating point numbers provide a way to trade off signal-to-noise ratio for an increase in dynamic range. For n bit floating-point numbers, with n-m bits in the mantissa and m bits in the exponent
DR is still a finite number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal-to-noise_ratio