I’m not a CS graduate or anything. I am a self-taught developer. This is what I’ve been wondering quite a while now.
I kinda know how images work. Yes, the format specifications might differ. A PNG file and a JPG file are different about how they *store* the image data. However, at the end of the day, images are the horizontal and vertical formation of pixels on a screen.
Yet, I do not know what a “sound” is. Images have a unit like “pixel”, what is the unit of sound?
Please note that I’m talking about “sound” as data, not as a physical event.
In: Technology
Sound waves (or pixels) are human perceived concept that computers do not understand. Everything is represented as numbers.
You can define a pixel as position(x,y),and amounts of red,green and blue (for example 0 to 255)
When it comes to sound, you can also store order, frequency and amplitude information digitally. And the unit will be… a simple dot on a wave graph.
Because real life is more detailed than the digital world, while reproducing or editing a sound file, computers can mathematically connect the saved “dots” to create sound waves. So, more dots per second = higher resolution.
Some audio formats store each captured dots lossless (such as WAV,FLAC,ALAC) and some formats use algorithms to delete or modify information to compress and save space (hopefully) without getting detected by the human ear. (such as AAC, MP3)
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