From the course: Digital Audio Foundations
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Gain stages in the digital domain
From the course: Digital Audio Foundations
Gain stages in the digital domain
- In the analog domain, a gain stage, a place where we can turn an audio signal up or down, works using an electrical circuit. In the digital domain, a gain stage works using math. Specifically, multiplication and division. Here's how a gain stage works in the digital domain. (piano chord) This recorded sound is made up of several thousand samples. Now, if we tell the audio software to turn up the sound by six decibels, then, behind the scenes, the computer actually goes through each of those thousands and thousands of samples and multiplies its value by two. (louder piano chord) Or, if we turn the sound down by six decibels, the computer divides each sample measurement in half. (softer piano chord) The specific amount that the computer uses to multiply or divide are different for different decibel amounts of volume change but the principle is the same. This is one reason older computers, from the 1990s or earlier, couldn't work as well with digital audio. They couldn't do all that…
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