Basics of ADCs and DACs, part 1

By Walt Kester and James Bryant, Analog Devices, Courtesy of DSP DesignLine
Jul 19 2007 (3:00 AM)

Introduction
Prior to the actual analog-to-digital conversion, the analog signal usually passes through some sort of signal conditioning circuitry, which performs such functions as amplification, attenuation, and filtering. The low-pass/band-pass filter is required to remove unwanted signals outside the bandwidth of interest and prevent aliasing
http://www.embedded.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201002320

[Part 2 explains how ADCs and DACs introduce noise through quantization errors, offsets errors, and other "DC" errors. It will be published Thursday, July 26.]