Digital Audio Technology, 4th Edition

7 Principles of error correction

Types of code errors

When digital signals are sent through a transmission channel, or recorded and subsequently played back, many types of code errors can occur. Now, in the digital field, even small errors can cause disastrous audible effects: even one incorrectly detected bit of a data word will create an audible error if it is, say, the MSB of the word. Such results are entirely unacceptable in the high quality expected from digital audio, and much effort must be made to detect, and subsequently correct, as many errors as possible without making the circuit over-complicated or the recorded bandwidth too high.

There are a number of causes of code errors:

Dropouts

Dropouts are caused by dust or scratches on the ...