audio-sample

An audio-sample is the smallest measurable unit of amplitude in a digitally represented audio signal — a single numeric value captured at one instant from one channel. Its parameters are: sample_instant (the time position determined by the sample rate, e.g. 44100 Hz means a sample every ~22.68 microseconds), quantization_level (the integer or float value representing sound pressure amplitude at that instant, encoded at a bit depth of 8, 16, 24, or 32 bits), and channel_index (which of the multi-channel signals this value belongs to). It persists as discrete entries in digital audio data structures — stored sequentially in PCM audio files, embedded within audio-frames as the individual values making up the frame's sample array, and represented as floating-point in modern processing pipelines (typically 32-bit IEEE 754 normalized to [-1, 1]). The audio-sample is the irreducible building block: no smaller unit of a digital audio signal exists. [formal: audio-sample | substrate: mind | horizon: a moment | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.02]