A group of musicians in a studio is the painting, and the software recording them is the art critic. (The analogy is a little crude, because computers work slightly differently, and sixteen bits of information actually refers to 2 to the 16th power which is 65,536 volumes and…look, trust us, you don’t need to know this, OK? Let’s just go with sixteen bits of information.
Couple that with her 44,100 glances at the painting, and she’ll have a very in-depth understanding of what she’s looking at. Each shade of yellow she can describe is a single bit of information - in this case, she has sixteen bits of information at her disposal. Let’s also say she’s reasonably smart and has the ability to describe sixteen different shades of yellow. So, when she’s writing up her review, she’ll be able to describe that yellow section as butter yellow, or lemon yellow, or gold. She also knows that there are many different shades of yellow, and will use that information to critique the painting. That’s a piece of information she now has. Let’s say our super-speedy critic is looking at a small portion of the picture, which happens to be painted yellow. Now let’s talk about the painting itself. (We’ll talk about why we picked those numbers below - for now, just roll with it). Obviously, if her sample rate were higher - like 96,000 times a second - she’d understand more about the painting. This art critic can look at the painting 44,100 times per second. Obviously, the more often the critic looks at the painting - the more she samples it - the more she’ll understand it. Let’s say this particular art critic really wants to get to grips with the painting above and really understand it, but can only look at it a certain number of times before she has to move on (she’s busy, OK?). Take a look at this wonderful piece of art: Boat and Yellow Hill - which we'll use to explain sample rate and bit depth! | Ed Bierman These are two measures that tell us how accurate a piece of digitally-recorded sound is, and we can understand them by imagining an art critic, looking at a painting. To understand how audio formats work, you need to understand two concepts: Sample Rate and Bit Depth. By the time you’re done, no strange acronym will confuse you again. If all of that made your head spin, we’re here to clear it up with our in-depth, completely straightforward guide to file formats.
And if you even dip so much as a toe into the world of digital music, you’ll be confronted with discussions about sample rates and bit depth and whether lossless FLAC files can ever match MQA for fidelity.
FLAC, WAV, AIFF, DSD… There’s no denying that picking the right type of audio to listen to can be crazy confusing.
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