What determines loudness ?

[gobble]

Hey folks

I jut realized I've forgotten some basics and suddenly blank about this.

In an analog wave what determines loudness? A note say E played on an instrument - how will it be represented in a frequency/amplitude graph when played very softly vs when played very loudly?

And the logical question follows - how is this information captured in a digital recording?

TIA
Regards

 

[gobble]

Thanks, but Afraid not. My doubt is this. There is this note played at frequency of say 1khz. How does the sampling at 48,000 times per second capture the amplitude of this loudly played note versus the softly played one?

I studied about Nyquist theory some 12 years back and now I have this vague feeling I had asked myself this question and "found" the answer then, but now I've forgotten some important detail since then. :sad:

TIA
Regards

 

[gobble]

Thanks for jogging my memory.

My confusion was about where is the amplitude data stored and where is the frequency data ? Is it accurate to say that the discrete samples are all integers that represent the amplitude and the DAC uses Fourier synthesis to reconstruct the original soundwave?

Regards

 

[gobble]

That is to say the frequency of sounds contained in a sample is inferred using Fourier analysis but not explicitly stored in digital format right?

Regards