Talk:Audio codec

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This page leaves the impression that a codec by definition involves compression. A CODEC mediates transitions between the analog and digital realms. The process of digital sampling imposes truncation in the frequency domain above the Nyquist frequency. However, this is a separate issue from compression.

I believe the acronym CODEC was coined to combine the terms COde DECode. A CODEC includes circuitry or software that

A. encodes analog signals as streams of digital information in one direction, and B. decodes streams of digital information to analog signals in the other direction.

The encoding can be a one-to-one mapping of analog to digital representations. There are variations in which a disproportionate number of bits are devoted to low amplitude signals (companding). Companding does involve a certain kind of compression. Other codecs explicitly compress the analog signal when they convert to digital.

This page is very PC-centric. In fact, it appears to ignore the central role of codecs in telephony. This is ironic, since I believe codecs were initially developed for telephone systems, and remain at the core of such systems.

Humev (talk) 20:08, 17 April 2008 (UTC)