Audio Damage Bitcom - Manual (Page 8)

Each of the eight bits allows part of the input signal to pass through to the output. These parts are added
together to form one output signal. In rough terms, the upper bits correspond to the bigger parts of the input
signal, and the lower bits correspond to the smaller parts. Putting it another way, the upper bits select the
parts of the signal that correspond to big changes in loudness, while the lower bits select the fine details. In
isolation, any one of these parts doesn’t tell you much about the signal, but added together they make up the
whole. If we turn on just the uppermost bit, we get a very chunky approximation of the signal:
That top bit selects just the part of the input signal that corresponds to the loudest part of the signal. If we
didn’t know what the input looked like, we’d have a hard time guessing by looking at this output. Most of the
original just isn’t there. If we listened to it, we’d hear a loud, buzzy signal with a lot of aliasing. Add the next
bit down and we get a slightly closer approximation of the original, shown on the next page: