ABSTRACT
The various characteristics of audio signals are described in Chapter 3. Since audio in multimedia is digital, the two-step digitization of audio by sampling and quantization is discussed, as are Fourier analysis and sub-band coding. Multimedia is used for music and speech, so these natural audio signals are also discussed. The musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) is described, and basic ideas of stereophonic and quadrophonic sound are introduced. The psychoacoustic model and its application to audio compression and MPEG are discussed. The chapter gives an overview of audio file formats.
