I'm studying Compression for university. Im facing the μ-law topic but i don't understand what input can take.
From the book "Digital Signal Processing: Fundamentals and Applications":
In this section, we will study analog μ-law companding, which takes an analog input signal; and digital μ-law companding, which deals with linear pulse code modulation (PCM) codes.
If I understood correctly, there are two types of applications:
- the first is that in which there is an analog audio signal at the input of the compressor which compresses the waveform into 8bit non-linear quantization.
- The second application that this algorithm finds is the one in which the input does not have an analog signal but an already digitized PCM signal (16bit for example) and further reduce it up to 8 bits
Am i right? or in both cases the signal have to be digitalized before the compressor?
Thanks a lot.