[linux-audio-dev] Fixed vs. floating point

[Jens M Andreasen]

On Fri, 2005-10-14 at 10:34 +0100, Steve Harris wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2005 at 11:37:30AM +0300, Hannu Savolainen wrote:
> > Floating point in turn has 24 bits of precision which is enough for audio. 
> > The exponent part takes care of scaling while the mantissa stays always 
> > normalized to the full 24 bit precision. In fact 64 bit precision is used 
> > for computations and intermediate results inside the FPU (x86 at least). 
> > In this way the programmer doesn't need to think about the precision (in 
> > most cases).
> 
> Pedantic geekiness warning
> 
> Actually there are 25 fixed-point equivalent bits of precision, due to the
> implicit 1. Its not much difference, but sometimes it matters.
> 

With so many experts around, it would be nice to have a small, effecient
16bit -> float, as well as a float -> 16bit (uhm, right, Intel hardware
will do this for you, but say you are someahere else)

> - Steve
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