Sampling resolution

• The dynamic range of the ear (inaudible to painful) is about 20 bits (i.e. to ).

    
  Table 1: Taken from [5] page 9
  

• Normally stored in 16 bits, of which 12 are significant. Telephony quality speech is sampled at 8kHz with a 12 bit dynamic range (stored in 8 bits with a non-linear squashing function).