quantizing noise

A type of distortion that occurs when an analog waveform is encoded into a digital

signal and then decoded back into an analog signal. The digital-to-analog conversion process occurs at sampling intervals and always involves some amount of approximation as the amplitude of the waveform is quantized, which involves converting each sample amplitude value to the nearest of 256 (28) standard approximate binary values.When the approximate digital values are reconverted and the analog waveform is reconstructed, the effect of the approximation manifests as quantizing noise. If the sampling rate is too low (i.e., infrequent) and/or the approximation is too extreme, the result is a phenomenon known as aliasing in which the reconstructed signal is inaccurate, or even unintelligible, and the resulting voice quality unacceptable. See also aliasing, amplitude, analog, binary, digital, distortion, noise, quantize, and waveform.

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