Ben Jefferys wrote:
> 
> Charles Baker wrote:
> 
> > Why the heck isn't there *more* emphasis on floating point in
> musical
> > signal processing ? Makes all the difference
> 
> Of course it doesn't necessarily have to be floating point. I'd guess
> a large part of the reason why floating point stuff is better is
> because it uses more bits - typically 32/64/80 (in think they're
> the standards). If you used 32 bit ints the quality would improve
> by a similar amount to your standard C floats, although there would
> be subtleties lost in quieter audio compared to using a float due to
> the "logarithmic" nature of floating point. But the 16-24-32 bit
> transition within the integer realm is very significant, and on
> some processors integer performance is superior.

	Hello,

	Not to belabor the point, but more bits are only a piece of the puzzle.  With
16 bit integers, all the sounds need to be interpolated to fit into 65,536
slots.  Floating points mean that the samples can be more exact.  This would
mean that samples can exist between the slots of the 65,536 points available
in 16 bit samples.  

	In a lot of computer music this means that noisy crappy sounding stuff can be
generated when creating direct output sounds in 16 bit 44K soundfiles.  In
practice, doing the computer generated work in floating point and then
translating that into 16 bit 44K soundfiles makes the same output sound much
more palatable on the ears.  Brad Garton used used to recommend that we employ
this method when creating computer music, although he also used and created
sounds using Cmix rather than Csound.  I'm not sure if Csound has
resynthesizing magic that makes this not necessary.

	my .02

-- 
Michael Coble, Time Inc. New Media, Pathfinder
Music:   http://pathfinder.com/pathfinder/staff/mcoble/music/
Gallery: http://www.panix.com/~coble,  representing various artists
Hitman:  http://pathfinder.com/pathfinder/staff/mcoble/