The traditional view is that the floating-point number format is superior to the fixed-point number format when it comes to representing sound digitally. In fact, while it may be counter-intuitive, ...

[Editor's note: For an intro to floating-point math, see Tutorial: Floating-point arithmetic on FPGAs. For a comparison of fixed- and floating-point hardware, see Fixed vs. floating point: a ...

You may have seen dB specs thrown around for various products available on the market today. Table 1 lists a few fairly established products along with their assigned signal quality, measured in dB.