PCMQuellen

PCMQuellen is a term used primarily in German-language discussions of digital audio to denote sources that provide Pulse-Code Modulation (PCM) data. In practice, PCMQuellen can be real-time streams or stored data, and they serve as the input for playback, processing, or analysis in PCM-based workflows. They include devices and formats such as analog-to-digital converters that produce LPCM when an analog signal is sampled, digital audio files in formats such as WAV or AIFF that contain linear PCM data, and network streams delivering PCM payloads in real time for playback.

Key properties of PCMQuellen include sampling rate, bit depth, and number of channels. Common sampling rates range from 8 kHz (telephony) up to 192 kHz or higher for high-definition audio; bit depths commonly 16 or 24 bits per sample. PCM data can be organized as interleaved or planar (separate per-channel) samples, and endianness may be little or big endian depending on the format. Linear PCM denotes the uncompressed form used by many consumer and professional formats.

In practice, PCMQuellen are interoperable within PCM-based systems provided that the sampling parameters match end-to-end and that the data is unmodified except for transport. They contrast with compressed or encoded forms (e.g., MP3, AAC, or DTS) that require decoding to PCM.

In telecommunications, PCMQuellen often refer to digital trunks employing PCM with mu-law or a-law companding, typically at 8 kHz sampling and 8-bit samples. The term is used in documentation to distinguish PCM sources from other digital representations.