can be digitally described as a stream of constant amplitude values called samples
A digital-to-analog converter converts this stream of numbers into a continuously changing voltage which, when used to drive a loudspeaker, is converted into a continuous change in air pressure – the sound.
Recording or synthesizing frequencies up to 10 kHz requires a sampling rate of 20 kHz. At this sampling rate, 1 million 16-bit samples are required to reproduce less than one minute of sound; for stereo sound, the required number of samples doubles. The considerable amount of data required for digital sound synthesis is a problem, both in terms of speed and manageability.
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SCALETTI, C. A. and JOHNSON, R. E., 1988. An interactive environment for object-oriented music composition and sound synthesis. ACM SIGPLAN Notices. Online. 1 January 1988. Vol. 23, no. 11, p. 222–233. [Accessed 29 September 2022]. DOI 10.1145/62084.62103.