Week Four – Reflection on Lyons Reading
The Fast Fourier Transform and Finite Impulse Response Filters
The Lyons reading is getting more and more esoteric. I understand the general concepts but the reading is so theoretical, I am still having trouble finding any use to these complex calculations. I suppose if I were a hardware/software designer trying to find the most cost effective method of sampling a signal, this would be really useful. The other part is that I have not had a chance to step back and really look at the reading and think about it.
When one is sampling a signal, using a digital filter limits the bandwidth of the frequency we are recording so we can limit the number of samples needed to obtain a clear representation of the waveform. Otherwise, we are wasting bandwidth and processing power.
It’s interesting that I can imagine using these calculations in the design of cellular phones, VOIP networks and other digital voice networks. I have more trouble seeing how this applies to the hardware and software of digital multi-tracking software. After a recent trolling of Cycling 74’s site, I found some interesting uses of FFT’s. I think it is just going to take some time to really see through the theoretical nature of this book and see the beauty and power of these equations and how they can be powerful tools when it comes to discrete linear-time based processes.
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