In article , Justin Ulysses
Morse writes:

Once again I present my favorite digital audio analogy, cash
denominations: Having some pennies in your pocket allows you to pay a
more precise amount even if you're spending thousands of dollars.

Following this analogy -- and I just know I'm gonna be wrong here but this is
just how it seems to me -- if we say, for example, that 16 bit audio is like
having a pocket full of 10 dimes then isnt 24 bit audio a pocket full of 100
pennies? Finer divisions of the same whole--the ability to describe finer
voltage differences?

I understand that the dynamic range increases with higher bit depth and I guess
in this money analogy we could think of that as having a dollar fifty or
something instead of the original dollar but it still seems like you get finer
resolution even in the first dollar.

Is this question not analogous to the number of pixels in a digital photograph?
The more pixels, the higher resolution the picture (all else being equal). That
being analogous to bit depth in audio then the rate of frames per second in a
moving picture would be analogous to sample rate. Is that a reasonable
comparison?

Sooner or later I'll phrase this question in enough different ways as to
clearly communicate what I want to ask!

Garth~


"I think the fact that music can come up a wire is a miracle."
Ed Cherney