# What exactly mean X bit depth?

I am not sure if I understand meaning of “bit depth” in audio.

As I see in many audio applications the audio sample values (when not distorted) are between minValue = -1.0f; and maxValue = 1.0f;.

I need to know the smallest possible value next to 0.0f of one sample.

As I suppose “x bit depth” means that one sample can be expressed by 2^16 various values. Am I right?

So does it mean that the smallest possible sample value change is (maxValue - minValue) / (pow(2.0f, x)) ??? So for 16 bit depth is it 2.0f / pow(2.0f, 16.0f) ?? Which is 4.6566128742e-10 ?

I have mess in mind, couse I have even problem with simple float variable. As I know it has 32 bits. So the biggest value should be 2^31 (and one bit for sign) which is 2147483647. And for int it works, but how is it possible that float max value can be 3.40282e+38 ? Which is much more than 2147483647.

So let’s imagine I have audio with 32 bit depth. So then the smallest possible sample value change is 2.0f / 2147483647.0f, or maybe 2.0f / 3.40282e+38 ???

And other issue is: should I realy devide (maxValue - minValue) / (pow(2.0f, x)) - which means bit depth concern to amplitude. Or it concern to gain - which means I should calculete it by 1.0f / (pow(2.0f, x)) ?

Please help me to understand it because my math calculations (a lot of logarithms and powers) gives me a lot of “NaN” and “inf”. So I need to narrow the possible inputs and outputs to avoid such errors. But first I need to understand how to do that.

For any help great thanks in advance. Best Regards

• "bit depth" is an audiophile term for word width of the fixed-point words representing the sampled audio signal. – robert bristow-johnson Mar 7 at 20:24