Based on the concept map by Bogdan about wavread() in the python module scikits.audiolab. The concept map clearly specifies what is background knowledge, so I’m assuming even the novices in this lesson would have a basic grasp of Python modules, functions, and arrays. Thus I’m approaching this as a question about novice / competent / expert with respect to the concepts that are specific to digital audio (i.e., sampling rate, bit depth, encoding, etc).
To distinguish novice from competent: “wavread() returns three things: Data, SamplingRate, and Encoding. Can you get the Bit Depth from this information?”
(Answer: NO) A competent student would know that sampling rate is independent from bit depth, and that bit depth can vary even within a given encoding format like WAV, FLAC, etc.
To distinguish competent from expert: “Outline the steps you need to mix two different mono sounds together to create a stereo sound.”
An expert would know things like:
- you need to pad the length of the shorter sound with zeros to match the length of the longer one
- mixing the two sounds is different than assigning each sound to either L or R channel
- you may need to scale the result of the mixture to avoid clipping