Sampling · Digital audio

Nyquist fold

A sinusoid sampled at fₛ keeps its pitch only below the Nyquist frequency fₛ/2; above it the samples are identical to those of a lower sinusoid at |f − fₛ·round(f/fₛ)|, and that alias is what plays back.

Builds on Samples per cycle. Taught in Waves & Buckets.

Start the real tone or its digitized version and sweep the frequency slider past half the sample rate (4 kHz by default, so Nyquist is 2 kHz): the input keeps rising while the played-back pitch folds and descends. The plot shows the samples, the input wave and the dashed alias that passes through the same points; the digitized tone is synthesized at the folded frequency.

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