[Randy Yates]

(Scott Dorsey) writes:

In article , Randy Yates wrote:

I'm trying hard to see an answer to my question in what you wrote and
failing.

Let me respond to you with this question: If you had a meter that
-24 dBFS with a Fs/4 sine wave, what would the peak value of the
sine wave be?

I don't know what a Fs/4 sine wave is.

A sine wave with a frequency that is one-fourth of the sample rate.

If the meter is reading -24 dBFS, and it's a 16 bit system, that
means the peak value of the waveform is 0x1FFF, right? Because
it's one-eighth of the full scale value.

The positive full-scale value of a two's complement 16-bit word is
0x7FFF, or 32767. One-eighth of that is (approximately) 0x0FFF, or 4095.

Assuming you just made an arithmetic error, that is an answer to my
question. Thank you.

So to infer from your response, one definition of dBFS would be
something like this:

dBFS = 20 * log_10(XPEAK / FSPEAK),

where XPEAK denotes the instantaneous peak level of the signal,
and FSPEAK is the full scale peak value of the digital path.

What units would a typical professional digital audio system use to
measure RMS values of digital signals?
--
Randy Yates % "And all that I can do
Digital Signal Labs % is say I'm sorry,
% that's the way it goes..."
http://www.digitalsignallabs.com % Getting To The Point', *Balance of Power*, ELO