Principles of Digital Audio, Sixth Edition, 6th Edition

CHAPTER 5Error Correction

The advent of digital audio changed audio engineering forever and introduced entirely new techniques. Error correction was perhaps the most revolutionary new technique of them all. With analog audio, there is no opportunity for error correction. If the conveyed waveform is disrupted or distorted, then the waveform is usually irrevocably damaged. It is impossible to exactly reconstruct an infinitely variable waveform. With digital audio, the nature of binary data lends itself to recovery in the event of damage. When a bit is diagnosed as incorrect, it is easy to invert it. To permit this, when audio data is stored or transmitted, it can be specially coded and accompanied by redundancy. This enables the reproduced data ...