Collaboration, Voice & AV · Foundational

Signal Quantization

The step in digitization that rounds each sample to the nearest discrete level, introducing small quantization error.

Definition

Quantization maps each analog sample amplitude to one of a finite number of levels determined by the bit depth; 8 bits gives 256 levels and 24 bits gives about 16.7 million. The difference between the true and quantized value is quantization noise. Telephony uses logarithmic (companded) quantization so that quiet speech gets finer steps, while professional audio uses linear quantization at greater bit depth.

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