Robert Whitlock Adams is a Technical Fellow at Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) in Wilmington, Massachusetts. His focus is on

signal processing Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing ''signals'', such as audio signal processing, sound, image processing, images, and scientific measurements. Signal processing techniq ...

and

analog-to-digital conversion In electronics, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC, A/D, or A-to-D) is a system that converts an analog signal, such as a sound picked up by a microphone or light entering a digital camera, into a digital signal. An ADC may also provide ...

for professional audio. He is a leader in the development of

sigma-delta converter Delta-sigma (ΔΣ; or sigma-delta, ΣΔ) modulation is a method for encoding analog signals into digital signals as found in an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). It is also used to convert high bit-count, low-frequency digital signals into lo ...

s, introducing architectural advances including mismatch shaping, multi-bit quantization, and continuous-time architectures. Adams graduated with a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

Electrical Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

from

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

in 1976. From 1977 to 1988 he worked for DBX, a professional audio recording company. There, he helped develop the industry's first

audio converter An audio converter is a device or software that converts an audio signal from one format to another. Hardware audio converters include analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), which convert analog audio to uncompressed digital form (e.g., PCM), and th ...

with greater than 16-bit resolution, as well as one of the earliest

digital audio Digital audio is a representation of sound recorded in, or converted into, digital form. In digital audio, the sound wave of the audio signal is typically encoded as numerical samples in a continuous sequence. For example, in CD audio, sa ...

recorders. In 1988, he joined the Converter Group of Analog Devices as a Senior Staff Designer, and went on to develop ADI's first sigma-delta converters in partnership with Paul Ferguson. He produced the world's first monolithic asynchronous sample rate converters (the AD1890 family), and he created ADI's sigmaDSP line of audio-specific

digital signal processing Digital signal processing (DSP) is the use of digital processing, such as by computers or more specialized digital signal processors, to perform a wide variety of signal processing operations. The digital signals processed in this manner are ...

cores. As of 1998, Adams had received 15 patents related to audio signal processing.

Awards and honors

*Elected Fellow of the

Audio Engineering Society The Audio Engineering Society (AES) is a professional body for engineers, scientists, other individuals with an interest or involvement in the professional audio industry. The membership largely comprises engineers developing devices or products ...

(AES), 1991 *Received AES Silver Medal Award, 1995 *Included in '' Electronic Design'' magazine's Engineering Hall of Fame, 2011 *Became a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2012 "for contributions to analog and digital signal processing" *Received the IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award, 2015 "for contributions to noise-shaping data converter circuits, digital signal processing, and log-domain analog filters" *Elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering in 2018 for contributions to digital storage and reproduction of high-fidelity audio.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adams, Bob Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century American engineers 21st-century American engineers 20th-century American inventors 21st-century American inventors American audio engineers Analog electronics engineers Fellow Members of the IEEE Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Tufts University School of Engineering alumni