Where to find info on quality of sinthesized signals?

[Norm Dresner]

I know I could do the math from first principles but ...

I'd like to find a table of (harmonic) distortion that results from
synthesizing sine waves as a function of # points per period and # bits.

Any pointers, URLs, book references, etc appreciated.

TIA
Norm

 

[Jim Yanik]

I know I could do the math from first principles but ...

I'd like to find a table of (harmonic) distortion that results from
synthesizing sine waves as a function of # points per period and # bits.

Any pointers, URLs, book references, etc appreciated.

TIA
Norm

I think harmonic distortion would depend on the filters and amplifiers
after the D-A converter.

 

[Norm Dresner]

I think harmonic distortion would depend on the filters and amplifiers
after the D-A converter.

Assume that they're perfect. They can certainly be made very good and it's
intuitively obvious to me that an 8-point approximation to a sine wave which
results in a staircase function with 8 level segments is going to have
orders of magnitude more distortion than any reasonable filter or amplifier.

Norm

 

[Robert Lacoste]

Hi Norm,

You can just simulate it under Excel : build a N line table with one line
per time sample, calculate the time in column 1, the signal voltage in
column 2 (sin (k.T) ), and the FFT in column 3 (yes, there is a FFT function
in Excel), and then just check the harmonic distorsion on the FFT.

Let us know the results...

Yours,

Robert Lacoste - ALCIOM : The mixed signals experts
http://www.alciom.com