Tutorial 2: Audio Multimedia

Key concepts:
Digital audio is a bunch of number values that are used to interpret sound waves at different points in time. The value is digitized, with digital audio you can copy the numeric values over and over again without ever losing any quality. With analog data you cannot copy it over and over again without losing quality, to prevent that from happening there is a software called CODEC. It codes and decodes analog data and digital audio. First it takes the analog sound and coverts its to a series of numbers which is digital audio, then it decodes it and takes the digital information and converts it back to analog audio, which you are then able to listen to. In order to play the audio back you have to have the same CODEC software which was used in the first place. Compression is another concept to multimedia audio. For multimedia audio you use a lossy compression type, which sacrifices file quality for the sake of compression, but can sound just as good to the human ear as the uncompressed version, but at a 7th or 10th of the size. With compression you run into two options quality vs size. Typically, with music you want higher quality and less compression, but if it is simply a voice you can have much more compression without losing much quality.

Creating your own Audio:
In order to create your own audio you have to have some type of hardware to capture the audio and then a software program. The audio hardware used is microphones and audio adapters, this hardware gets attached to a line-in, mic jack, or USB port, which are all found on most every PC or laptop. The software used can be downloaded for free, or if more advanced software is required you can purchase it.

Excel Project

      In this excel project you had to analyze an excel spreadsheet with data, from a fitness center owner, that measured 500 subjects starting heart rate and there heart rate each minute through a 15 minute workout, then each minute during a 5 minute cool down. The data contained there age, sex, and 21 heart rate measurements.

     The skills you had to use to analyze this data included properly adjusting the headings and data, adding new columns and label them correctly, inserting formulas accurately to apply to the correct columns of data, format the worksheet to the right specifications for printing, and insert pivot tables into new worksheets.              The main skills I learned during this project were inserting the formulas and pivot tables. I now fully understand how to format the formulas so they apply to the correct data. I also learned how to use pivot tables and how they can help you to more easily read and organize a whole lot data. Overall I am a lot more knowledgeable about the "in's and out's" of excel.