Resampling is synonymous with several processes commonly used in manipulating audio, through which a segment of sampled audio (often erroneously termed a sample) is manipulated before being stored back to a (possibly different) sampled format.
This operation in digital signal processing involves converting a sampled signal from one sampling frequency to another without changing the period of the sample as would occur if the sampled audio was played at the new rate directly. For instance, the output waveform of a digital audio workstation that was processed at 96 kHz must be resampled to 44.1 kHz to be placed on a Compact Disc. See sample rate conversion.
This operation in digital signal processing involves converting each sample of a sampled signal from one representation of amplitude to another. For instance, the output waveform of a digital audio workstation that was processed using 24 bits to represent amplitude would be resampled to 16 bits to be placed on a Compact Disc. See quantization (sound processing).
The term "resampling" is often applied to short recordings completed before final mixdown that are reused or substituted in the work, synonymous with bouncing as applied to multitrack recording. Such resampling was commonplace to work with the limitations of contemporary samplers or other digital audio manipulation systems, where memory or processor use could be reduced by combining several samples that would always sound simultaneously through recording their combination to make a new sample