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Basic technical question about digital source signals

Forgive if this is a stupid question, but the current thread about digital vs analog made me curious: if you look at an analog music signal you see (I think) summations of sine waves i.e. a signal waveform which is "smooth". I realize that there are many contributions to digital sound, but starting with the most basic, if you look at the output from a digital source e.g. on an oscilloscope, would it appear "smooth" i.e. has all the stairstepping that occurs when you convert digital to analog been smoothed out or would the signal appear jagged to some extent?

Thanks for your time.
berner99

Showing 2 responses by cleeds

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cleeds
5,662 posts
 
berner99
... if you look at the output from a digital source e.g. on an oscilloscope, would it appear "smooth" i.e. has all the stairstepping that occurs when you convert digital to analog been smoothed out or would the signal appear jagged to some extent?
The "stairstepping" you refer to is really a misnomer, although it's widely believed. For proof, see this.
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cleeds
5,662 posts
 
headphonedreams
You can actually see small steps in Stereophile's measurements of many dacs.
Which ones? It's a broken DAC if you can see steps on the output.
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