What are nonrepresentational components of an image?

As an image is composed of pixels, each with a RGB value, what are the fundamental components of sound?

• Take the smallest possible indivisible segments of a song (so the individual moments that are sequenced together to form a flowing experience of sound) and imagine them as being analogous to pixels in an image, as the fundamental bits that are arranged in a particular order. (extra question - is there a particular name for these indivisible segments?) Now each pixel that makes up an image can be described fully by an numerical Red, Green, Blue value, as far as I'm aware. So my burning question is how can each indivisible segment of a song be fully described in terms of numerical value. Would this simple be a pitch and tone value, or is something extra needed? Or is there something more fundamental that encompasses pitch and tone? Please try to draw analogies with the information that describes images if possible. Thanks in advance Quora community!

• Answer:

  Like an image is split into pixels, sound is split into time. "One pixel" is called one sample and it represents the volume at that point in time. A sample typically has the length of 1/44100 of a second. A pixel has three values between 0 and 255 representing the level of red, green and blue. A sample typically has two values representing the volume in the left channel and the right (stereo sound). The values are typically between -32768 and 32767. This is called 16-bit stereo 44.1 kHz. If we saved the sound as 24-bit instead, the values would be between -8388608 and 8388607. If we increased the sample rate (44.1 kHz) to 96 kHz the samples would be just 1/96000 of a second. Basically, the higher values, the more accurate representation of the analog sound. What I described above is sound. But music is something else and can be described in another way... Music data (called MIDI data) has pitch and length, and this can be shown as a musical score, or converted to sound in a synthesizer.