Imagine that time is the X axis, the level is Y.
Now, to imagine how the DAC works, let’s recall the school geometry course. The number of zeros and ones in one piece is determined by the sampling depth or quantization, or, simply, bit depth. One second of sound can be encoded with a different number of such pieces, the number of these pieces is determined by the sampling frequency, that is, if the sampling frequency is 44.1 kHz, then one second of sound will be divided into 44100 such pieces. Here, the flowers mark coded small pieces of sound. We will not go into the jungle of hardware stuffing, considering various technologies and the element base, we simply denote on the fingers what is happening in the hardware. As mentioned earlier, a DAC is used for this kind of conversion.
To begin with, let’s try to understand how a digital signal is converted to analog. Let’s figure out what happens with the signal that passes through the sound card. The answer to this question is very ambiguous. This is where one of the most frequently asked questions arises:Ĭan I use the built-in sound card to record and / or process sound?
Modern PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc., as a rule, already have a built-in sound card, which allows you to record and play sounds, if you have recording and playback devices. Thus, the sound interface is subject to the obligation to convert the analog signal to digital and / or vice versa, which is actually the core of the sound interface: digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converter (DAC and ADC or DAC and ADC, respectively), as well as the binding to in the form of a hardware codec, all kinds of filters, etc. A modern computer works with digital information, that is, information that is encoded in the form of a sequence of zeros and ones (in more precise language, in the form of signals of discrete bands of analog levels). The playback device (final) somehow reproduces an analog or sinus signal, which is expressed as a sound or elastic wave. During the passage of the signal through the audio interface, a special signal conversion is performed so that the receiving side can process this signal in the future. processing system (computer) – a sound reproducing device (speakers, headphones) įormally, all that a simple person needs from the sound interface is to remove data from the recording device and give it to the computer, or vice versa, to take the data from the computer, sending it to the playback device.sound recording device (microphone) – processing system (computer).In our case, the systems can be something like this: From the point of view of system analysis, an interface is something designed for the interaction of two or more systems. In general, a sound card is a subset of the sound interface. We make a reservation right away, the sound interface, audio interface, sound card – as part of the presentation, are contextual synonyms. However, in the framework of this article, we will focus not on a musical instrument in the usual sense (guitar, piano, triangle …), but on an instrument that is further necessary for processing an audio signal. Actually, any musician, being a reasonable person, should be able to at least to some extent own a musical instrument. It just so happened that a reasonable person began to be called precisely from the moment the tool was used for any type of activity (the wording is lame, but in general it is).